Hey, I started on COBOL 86 where you could write your own memory management by bringing parts of the program in and out of memory.
As for deep calls, try PeopleSoft COBOL. There are sometimes 5 or 6 deep nested calls with combined COPY and CALLs and Linkage Sections the size of Baltimore (also made up of sometimes dozens of copybooks).
I am one of the guys they are talking about — wrote COBOL for over 20 years.
This was very helpful for me as I am independent and did’t even think of featuring my old COBOL (and JCL, TSO, SPUFI and DB2) skills.
I am making up a CV that emphasizes those right now thanks to this article!
A little research shows that these jobs exist in the ether. I’m just seeing dungeon troll jobs. I want to sit up here in the hills and punch code, not rot in a cubicle in Columbia SC.
I would prefer to never see JCL again if possible. Give me COBOL running on *nix.