ping
One of the cool things about getting old is that wonderful new software you help develop when you were a youngster is now an antique supported by no-one except a few old timers who knows how it works.
Management is so stupid and incompetent they can’t seem to replace the system—over and over again they hire contractors who fail. Successful software development projects should be called the eighth wonder of the world—there is a rumor they exist somewhere but they sure are hard to find.
I went from COBOL to Java to Groovy/Grails. I may just go back to COBOL. I fixed several problems last week on a COBOL programmer.
ALL programmers in India learn COBOL. There is no shortage of COBOL programmers.
There is a shortage of people who want to do COBOL.
I am available for anyone needing to upgrade their cobol systems.
I can probably fit it onto a PC with a microsoft ACCESS database
Call me
(yes $100/hr)
I just took a break from coding a COBOL program to read this. Oh the irony.
Sure, just like a car runs on gasoline.
Let me know when FORTRAN makes a big comeback!
COBOL- It sounds like a name from Battlestar Galactica. I learned cobol in college. It was “new.” So was I.
Interesting. I need to have a conversation with my wife about this.
She was a COBOL programmer before kids. The last one graduates home school high school in a week or two.
At $100 an hour, the odd job might be a good deal.
COBOL was designed in great part by Grace Hopper. Very amazing lady.
I used to do Assembler language for some banks in Nashville back in the 70’s. That’s what the Weiland DDA checking account system was written in. I wonder if anyone does Assembler anymore? Two AM reading a hex dump, those were the days.
Hahaha So just before I read this I tried to access my on line banking at a local branch. It seems they switched to a new version and it isn’t working.
A notice was plastered on their site saying “Some of our Customers are experiencing difficulty with our new site, we apologize for the inconvenance....”
According to the new site I don’t have an account... SAWEET!
So I call their 1-800 24 hr. support and even it is down.
Yowza.
They haven’t all ridden their mighty steeds into the sunset! There are quite a few around who know that stuff, and unlike their indian replacements, know what the **** they are doing!
The powers that be made sure that there would be no jobs for AMERICANS any more.
One more thing: the c*cks*ckers in Washington made it very hard for those who are collecting SS to work and earn money. They tax the hell out of the SS using a complex formula that deliberately hides the fact that they are taxing the SS.
F*ck them. If I could work under the table I would. F*ck them again.
Gee, unfortunately my first and only foray into programming was on an NCR based system in the mid 60s, the 315 series, which used its own compiler.
I don’t think there’s a shortage of people who know COBOL because every computer programming student I knew in the 80s had to take COBOL (and hated it). People just don’t want to do it.
Back in the early 70s I had roommate from India who was a Cobol, Fortran and another computer language writer. The banks were fighting over him.
He over stayed his visa and didn’t finish his masters and went to work for some bank down in Little Rock at the beginning of the Clinton era.
Last I heard he had a huge corner office in a skyscraper.
Ping, given your FReepname...
:)
RPG (Report Program Generator) is still going strong. And it was created in 1959, just like COBOL. At a lot places using the IBM iSeries, it is still used even for new development. At my business software company, we are about half and half; a couple hundred each of RPG and C++ programmers. I do admit though, that the RPG guys are typically either graybeards, or young guys willing to learn anything to get a job. The hotter new stuff for us is mostly C++ on Windows servers.