Posted on 04/11/2017 5:59:49 AM PDT by blueplum
Bill Hinshaw is not a typical 75-year-old. He divides his time between his family – he has 32 grandchildren and great-grandchildren – and helping U.S. companies avert crippling computer meltdowns.
Hinshaw, who got into programming in the 1960s when computers took up entire rooms and programmers used punch cards, is a member of a dwindling community of IT veterans who specialize in a vintage programming language called COBOL.
[snip] Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than $100 an hour when they get called in to patch up glitches, rewrite coding manuals or make new systems work with old.
For their customers such expenses pale in comparison with what it would cost to replace the old systems altogether, not to mention the risks involved.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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.
It’s seen as a resume-killer by Millenials. Fools.
Sure, just like a car runs on gasoline.
We are converting from Oracle Forms to Groovy. The leads were panicking because we had to convert all that Forms code.
Oracle Forms is written in PL/SQL, which is the same language in Oracle Procedures and Functions. Just spin it to packages and call it from Groovy.
Let me know when FORTRAN makes a big comeback!
Why would anyone write a COBOL program? Java is much quicker. I write all my jobs in Java now using PL/SQL packages for the business logic.
The problems I fixed were due to a different compiler, which is one of the drawbacks of COBOL. I had another COBOL program that had a Linkage Section for a call to another COBOL program. That was a nightmare.
One reason would be that Java hadn't been invented yet.
My IT department is 95% Indian. Not one of them works with COBOL. They do not want to go near a COBOL application. I am in the process of converting all COBOL programs to Oracle PL/SQL. They have Linux here and I have workd on shell scripts as well. COBOL - and IBM JCL - is/was a good foundation.
COBOL- It sounds like a name from Battlestar Galactica. I learned cobol in college. It was “new.” So was I.
Yes but they were writing it today.
We have a bunch of SQR programs. You don’t have to declare your variables in SQR. Worst language ever. You can fat finger a variable and it still compiles. It takes forever to figure it out.
Java is mixed case. That drives an old COBOLer like me nuts.
Riiiight....
I just moved a Linux script to Production. I’m writing a ton of those things. It reminds me a bit of WFL on the old Burroughs mainframes.
if [ -f file.txt ]
is a lifesaver.
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.
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