The Plight Of Cobol Mainframe Programmers

[Frankie the Fink]

My fav COBOL story is when Schwarzenegger was the governor of CA and decided to reduce the salaries for state employees - to try to reduce the deficit.. The payment system's software was written in legacy COBOL. So, he had to try to hire COBOL state employees BACK from being laid off to change software to reduce their state salaries.

https://www.theregister.com/2008/08/...ol_california/

[MY03C5Z]

The company I work for uses both SAP and Baan. What are you IT experts thoughts on the Baan system? Seems pretty dated to me but our Co has been using it for around 20 years or more. SAP going on 10 years.

[Frankie the Fink]

I don't know Baan, but SAP has been around for a LONG time and is well-respected and robust.

The issue with legacy software is that it may be robust and get the job done, but maintenance can be problematic if its not widely used anymore.

[DDSLT5]

I have no idea wtf all this is about. That is all.

[BayouCountry]

Took a Cobol course in college and never thought I would see that mess of a language again.

Well, that didn’t happen when a financial manager got sold a bill of goods and bought a bloated financial system written in Cobol. Being the only person with a programming background, I got the honor of maintaining the antiquated Application. All software updates were applied manually by typing in code and compiling. Finally about 3 years later the vendor implemented automated Java patches.

I think what bugged me the most about COBOL was the strict adherence to margin spacing. Shit, this isn’t compiling? Oh, I’m off by a space.

[Frankie the Fink]

Originally Posted by BayouCountry

Took a Cobol course in college and never thought I would see that mess of a language again. [

Well, that didn’t happen when a financial manager got sold a bill of goods and bought a bloated financial system written in Cobol. Being the only person with a programming background, I got the honor of maintaining the antiquated Application. All software updates were applied manually by typing in code and compiling. Finally about 3 years later the vendor implemented automated Java patches.

I think what bugged me the most about COBOL was the strict adherence to margin spacing. Shit, this isn’t compiling? Oh, I’m off by a space.

Much of COBOL programming was to produce hardcopy reports, on antiquated, "dumb" printers, so formatting became all important.

HOWEVER COBOL was one of the first, useful, machine-independent programming languages and every piece of code today owes some allegiance to Admiral Grace Hopper.

[GixxerBill RIP]

Yet you geezers are still connecting to the internet with a router that hasn't had its firmware updated since the Obama era

[Frankie the Fink]

Originally Posted by GixxerBill RIP

Yet you geezers are still connecting to the internet with a router that hasn't had its firmware updated since the Obama era

Well, at least we aren't living in the parents' basement splitting our time between playing Grand Theft Auto and watching OnlyFans videos with one hand hoping Mom has the Hot Pockets ready soon.

[GrandSportC3]

Whenever I'm getting laid off (and I'm sure that it will happen in the next 5 years), I may go back to consulting. Mainframe skills are getting more and more rare and positions will pay more and more as more mainframers retire. Mainframe/Cobol is not a bad skill to have for the upcoming years as it becomes more and more valuable as long as Cobol systems are still around. Those with both, server based and Cobol/Mainframe knowledge are already raking in over $200k per year.