COBOL programmers are aging OUT

Jerod Santo and Cameron Seay on "The Changelog" podcast. 🎧 👉 changelog.fm/524
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[@Eloii_Xia]

Yes, it's the same with LISP! I'm 26 years old and I learned LISP and COBOL at university. Everyone told me "don't do it" for a lot of stupid reasons with no arguments. Today, most of the people I work with are close to retirement, so in a few years I'll probably be the only one in my company who can understand how our business logic works. I'll (almost) literally be the only person who can work on the oldest and most specific projects still in use today. The company I'm currently working for has understood this, and they pay me a lot more than my manager, because if I leave, there'll be nobody left to write COBOL programs. They try to recruit young people, but nobody wants to do COBOL :/

[@Changelog]

Thanks for sharing, we've heard a few stories like yours... crazy!

[@zazzleq6139]

Hi, I’m willing to learn but in the UK. Where do you learn COBOL for industrial level skills? I’m willing to learn

[@Eloii_Xia]

@@zazzleq6139 One of my university professors gave me his old courses. For beginners, I recommend the book "Beginning COBOL for Programmers" by Michael Coughlan. I started with this book.

[@dearvincent3109]

​@@Eloii_Xia Hi partner, how are you? I would like to study COBOL and I will try the book you said. Is it there any other sources to scale my skills to industrial levels? When will I be able to apply for a job? Sorry if I dont explain myself enough. I'm currently learning english.

[@Eloii_Xia]

@@dearvincent3109 Hey, you can check out the course "Free course: Announcing Learning COBOL Programming with VSCode" offered by IBM. It's a course designed for beginners!

[@GeeseH]

it's nice to have a very specific random niche thought and find a video on exactly that.

[@Death_Metal_Head]

So if I was to hypothetically learn enough COBOL to become employable, you’re saying I wouldn’t be wasting my time? 🤔

[@shawns3675]

Many COBOL jobs are going overseas, where mainframes are still more relevant. COBOL doesn't need a bachelor's degree, just a technical certification. Companies can hire a trainee for a fraction of the price for a seasoned professional. Companies are finding ways to sunset old COBOL systems by merging. There are no new COBOL systems being created or significantly overhauled, which would require significant senior level analysis, design, or development. Most work now is to create interfaces, which can most often be created by and maintained by relatively junior programmers and analysis.

[@adailyllama4786]

Was just thinking about COBOL and the several classes I took in the early 90s.

[@HikaruAkitsuki]

I was practicing to be a full stack developer until I heard this news. But that's the problem. Where the heck can I found the resources to study this programing.

[@Changelog]

This is a decent place to start finding resources: www.openmainframeproject.org

[@fuzzy-02]

@Hikaru Akitsuki Coursera and Udemy seemed to have a ton of courses. Was watching primeagen react to a video and he checked both sites

[@JuanSanchez-rb4qu]

@@Changelog How about certifications? or they arent asking for those anymore?

[@avacado6399]

@@JuanSanchez-rb4qu man certs wont matter when you have 1 or 2 people applying to a job

[@enteryourname7374]

@@avacado6399 haha true, they might only have a demand for experience

[@marcuswilliams3455]

Yes, but some don’t seem to realize Cobol has its own niche market. Not only does one need to know the language, but the understand platform. Not only is there Cobol on mainframe, there other implementations on Unisys (Clearpath), IBM System I (aka AS400), Openmvs and Linux. Also, one needs to know the supporting frameworks such as, CICS, DB2, the various dataset (file) types, Job Control Language (JCL). And not to mentioned the familiarity of the Business Domain that’s being supported. Seems to me, part of the scarcity of Cobol Programmers, there isn’t much incentive to learn the language. Though, the market may change drastically over the next 20 years, employers are still very selective. I’ve seen Cobol positions open for weeks with multiple applicants.

[@andrewyork3869]

Just cause they applied doesn't mean they are qualified.

[@marcuswilliams3455]

@@andrewyork3869 yes, so true. But what are the odds when none other applicants meet their qualifications.

[@andrewyork3869]

@marcuswilliams3455 I had it explained to me like this. It's a wishlist. They know they are very unlikely to get everything, but they value somethings more than others.

[@rty1955]

There are two types of COBOL programmers. Batch & transactional. Batch is very straight fwd, unless tou are ising a database. Transactional usually means CICS. So not only do you have to understand COBOL, but you also need to learn CICS. Fun fact: COBOL-D has NO PERFORM clause. I wrote tons of COBOL-D code

[@marcuswilliams3455]

@@rty1955 Ok, you have me at a lost. Is Cobol-D a derivative of standard Cobol? I didn't have much luck in googling a good description.

[@joecooper1703]

Salaries don't reflect it. COBOL has a much lower average salary than many other languages; it's on the low end, down there with PHP, etc. I'd be happy to herd big iron, but I've have to take a big pay cut to do it. If those giant companies need COBOL programmers so bad, they need to be willing to pay competitive rates.

[@andrewyork3869]

85/hour starting on indeed is better then webdev

[@victoryiswithinus]

Who teaches courses or where can I find them?

[@joshhorvath4984]

The community college in my area stopped teaching COBOL the 2007-2008 school year, the year before I started. I might have taken the course if they hadn't stopped teaching it.

[@JackBauerDev]

Nobody needs campuses to learn a language. Universities produce horrible devs