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

[2ndDivisionVet]

COBOL is celebrating 60 years since its specifications were signed off. Darling of Y2K consultants, the language is rapidly approaching pensionable age, but many a greybeard owes their career to it.

It arose from a desire to create a language that could straddle the computers of the era. Each manufacturer had its own way of working, which, while OK if a company always stuck with one maker, made portability of programs or skills a tad tricky.

If only there was, say, a COmmon Business-Oriented Language? Wouldn't that be splendid?

Mary Hawes, a programmer of Burroughs machines, put forward a proposal in 1959 that users and manufacturers create a common language that could run on different computers and handle tasks such as payroll calculation and record keeping. The US Department of Defense (DoD), which tended to buy computers from different makers, took an interest and sponsored a meeting in May of that year to kick off the creation of the language.

Having found the then two-year-old FORTRAN not quite to its taste, the DoD was keen on an alternative and the target date of September was set for a specification for an interim language, a stopgap that would become COBOL.

[bankwalker]

I wrote COBOL for many years and love it ... and miss it ...

VAX, not IBM

[Songcraft]

"Branch and link registers...IBM SYS/360."

There ya go!   (IBM 370 too.)   Just guessing here -- you probably know what a S-0C7 is too, GingisK!       :-)

[datricker]

I like lisp- I use Clojure as you can reuse all of java and javascript with clojurescript. I think Lisps are older than COBOL. Anyone ever try APL? I looked into its successor Jacobsen created called J. I understand it is used by quants and financial types. Seems super interesting.

For a very long time I made fun of python - now I'm building a fairly complicated Framework with Python for a client - I must say I like Python. I programmed Perl for 15 years Python is much nicer - I was a hater and was doing clojure and thought this is going to suck but I was pleasantly surprised.

[Donnafrflorida]

I am still coding COBOl. Recently learned SSIS. Not sure about the.net stuff though.

[MarDav]

Was hired to program in COBOL during the Y2K scare. Lasted at that for a few years then the company I was working for put me on database maintenance which included embedded M204 code. Ugh.

[Donnafrflorida]

Or ENVIRONMENT SECTION for the EPA.

[Donnafrflorida]

//PJ DD *
//

[YogicCowboy]

Which is what multi-linguists say about linguistic languages.

[IronJack]

I coded it (and 360 Assembler) for 20 years. I get a dozen requests a week from recruiters to submit a resume for some mainframe job or other. Of course, they don't pay squat, the systems -- by definition -- are antiquated and usually inefficient, and you spend most of your time trying to force the mainframe round peg into the client-server square hole.

There aren't even very many schools that teach it anymore, yet there are millions of lines of mission-critical COBOL code in the computerverse. If a person wanted to make money for the next 50 years, you'd learn it as a fallback skillset; you'd always have a job.

[Political Junkie Too]

Thank you!!!

I'm always open to input...

-PJ

[Songcraft]

And what is the "DATA DIVISION" -- the "Census Bureau"?   The "Bureau of Labor Statistics"?

And how about the "PROCEDURE DIVISION" -- is that the "Department of Health and Human Services"?        :-)

[ml/nj]

What COmmon Business Oriented processes run at the speed of 25 microseconds?

Probably none.

I used to joke that my jobs didn't involve printing mailing labels. (Which I used to use as an example of a trivial job, compared, e.g., to controlling moving parts on an airplane.) But then a major shipping company asked me to improve their system so you've probably seen a mailing label or two that I had something to do with. Nobody cared about speed. The printers are quite slow relatively. And I don't recall specifics now but when you're sending commands to devices like printers (this was pre-Windows) it sometimes helps to descend to assembly language. (I didn't direct these things. I did them.)

ML/NJ

[Songcraft]

(Or, Working Storage = Congress?   Not bloody likely!)

[laker_dad]

My first COBOL program was on punch cards. The IBM 1130 only needed “COB” to start the compiler, so all my programs began with “COBWEBS CAUSE CANCER”.

[grey_whiskers]

[katnip]

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......

I started my COBOL programming career in 1982 working on Burroughs computers for a financial software company in Florida.

Eventually went to work for one of our users, large bank in NYC. Lived through all the Unisys changes. DMS II is beautiful and I loved COBOL.

Retired in 2004 but I'm pretty sure I could walk right back into the job again, just don't want to.

[bankwalker]

I have to disagree. VAX/VMS/COBOL was awesome.

[Songcraft]

You really didn't want to drop those program punch cards all over the floor, either!        :-)

(And every time you wanted to change a routine, you had to go punch up a bunch of new cards on the keypunch machine!)

Did you use different color cards (green/orange/yellow) for running special utilities?

[TomServo]

Well, different strokes and all that..😉

[bankwalker]

When SQL arrived, the world changed.