COBOL: Five little letters that if put on a CV would ensure stable income for a greybeard coder

The Register ^ | September 16, 2019 | Richard Speed

[SecondAmendment]

Today’s script kiddie snowflake coders can’t handle the error messages spit out from a compiler ... and get off my lawn !

[Born to Conserve]

Once you’ve learned a half dozen or so programming languages, it just doesn’t matter any more.

[Retrofitted]

As a hobbyist, I coded in Basic, Assembler (Z80/6800), APL, and Ada, then wrote my first CoBOL program and started that as a job on a really awful Vax/VMS system.

Nowadays, I just wait patiently for Brainf*ck to catch on... ;)

[Songcraft]

"Assembler was the sh*t."

"BALR" - Sounds like something Biden or Kamala might put on their resume.

[03A3]

I learned Fortran, Basic, and C, and Assembler in school, in that order. Assembler was the most difficult being low level and needing to understand the architecture of the microprocessor. Gave me fits sometimes.

[cyclotic]

I made that suggestion to my wife, who was a COBOL programmer. She has no interest in going back to work.

[OKC Patriot]

Truth!!!

[RightGeek]

https://www.gtsoftware.com/products/netcobol/netcobol-for-windows/

[Political Junkie Too]

I loved COBOL. I was a master at it.

The question is, do these "greybeards" today have to know JES3/JCL to run the COBOL, or does it run on PC servers now?

//PJ DD DUMMY

[dljordan]

I wrote assembler for several banks shaving pennies off for them. If I had been a crook I would be rich as this was the early 80s. Knowing what I know now about those ass-wipes I should have been a crook.

[AbolishCSEU]

ugh i’m dealing with leftover visual fox pro

[The Duke]

Still waiting on the release of Turbo Cobol...

And waiting ...

[Chode]

CICS was looong time ago...

[srmanuel]

Started with Burroughs in 1981, learned a little Cobol while there doing mainframe support.

Recently I saw job listing in Detroit, that wanted someone with Burroughs/Unisys A-Series Cobol and DMS II experience.

Unisys was what Burroughs became after they merged with Sperry-Univac....I supported Cobol and DMS II which was their Database system when I left Burrougs in the early 1990s......

[MisterArtery]

I was a FORTRAN jockey in the late 60’s. COBOL programmers were referred to as cobblers.

[P.O.E.]

I learned on Assembler, COBOL, Fortran77, and C++.

Talk about old.

[Billthedrill]

I’m set for Y3K. Those whippersnappers will come at me waving money. If money still exists.

[Flick Lives]

Comments?

I think you mean...

000250* Comments?

[Robert DeLong]

Not with COBOL II. You only need a period before leaving a routine 8>)

[TomServo]

really awful Vax/VMS system..

Is there a good one? I hated the crap outta that.