Anyone need a COBOL programming job?

[Doctor Q]

COBOL was designed in 1959 by a team led by Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper. It's been used for many government programming project ever since, including much of the software used by the Internal Revenue Service (see article). The programming language fell out of favor, at least at universities and private businesses, in the 1980s.

Now New Jersey governor Phil Murphy has announced that the state needs COBOL programmers (although he mispronounced it as "cobalt"). This is for the state's unemployment insurance systems, which are being overwhelmed with requests related to the coronavirus pandemic.

For more details, see COVID-19 Response: New Jersey Urgently Needs COBOL Programmers (Yes, You Read That Correctly).

 

[GGJstudios]

That's hysterical! Nothing like waving a flag that says "I'm in the Stone Age, technically speaking!"
I remember well the days of COBOL, FORTRAN, ALC, DOS, etc. I have no desire to go back!

 

[ArrayDecay]

I took a COBOL class in high school (around 1978) and my teacher's name was...no joke...Mr. Apple.

 

[bousozoku]

Apparently, Micro Focus COBOL was used for many states' unemployment systems. There is a demand, but I remember Micro Focus as having the most unusual dialect anywhere, and even though I could probably get back into it on an IBM system, I doubt I could stomach working with Frankenstein's creation version of COBOL.

 

[Erlang]

I programmed in COBOL in 1978 at ICL on 1900 Mainframes. Not an experience I'd ever like to return to.

 

[Weaselboy]

At my old job we had a WANG mini-server that ran a mission critical COBOL app for us. There was this one older gentleman in town who knew COBOL programming and charged us $120 an hour to code changes we needed. Everybody screamed bloody murder each time he invoiced us, but he was the only game in town. This was mid-1980s, so a pretty high hourly rate for that time.

When I retired in 2007, that app had been ported to AccuCOBOL on HP UNIX servers, and was still humming away. I honestly think 100 years from now, our descendants will still be relying on COBOL (maybe without knowing it).

As Q mentioned, a LOT of government systems run on COBOL and migrating to a new language is no small task.

 

[millerj123]

In 2012 the company I worked for was still using microfocus COBOL for back end processing, until we shut down.

 

[Tigger11]

I made so much money in 1999 with the Y2K scare and COBOL code, I put the pool in the backyard of the new house, my wife saw that article and said is that the same COBOL that you had on the banner when you originally bought the house? Yes, the pool, the 6 foot fence, and probably a good part of the down payment was from 11 companies, I fixed the Y2K problem on and guaranteed my work, my lawyer was firmly convinced that my LLC was going to get sued into bankruptcy if something failed badly, but I got 8 thank you notes in January and never heard from the other 3, and been enjoying the pool, backyard and house ever since. I was so surprised that anyone still uses it these days though, that was 20 years ago, for it to still be around is a little scary.
-Tig

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Ah, Y2K nostalgia! It may deserve a forum of is own! I was the IT guy in a "small" operating unit of a large company. Our unit had near-zero exposure to Y2K (a lot of PCs, 1 IBM System 36 that we knew had exposure, and a lot of "primary production equipment" that was too primitive to include computers/microprocessors), but I had to catalog every piece of capital equipment and its exposure to Y2K for the sake of Corporate. Oh, and the guy who used the S/36 was a Cobol programmer, so we didn't even need outside help. Kinda wished we'd had some exposure, because there was some serious capital budget money available for upgrades/replacements. Buying is much more fun than just pushing paper!

 

[WilliamDu]

Grace Hopper's COBOL was written in very early IT days for a specific purpose for which it worked great.
FORTRAN was a great tool and all there was back then to do that kind of work.
Anyone remember AUTOCODER?
Those all worked fine and reliably without bugs which is more than you can say about modern disasters like Catalina.
I had occasion to use all those on an IBM 1401 (16K BYTES memory) in the early '60s for which I used a card punch machine to feed punch cards into the card reader.
If my program didn't work, I punched some more cards until it did because I found MY bugs.
Too bad Apple's army of programmers don't do that.
You do what you can with what you have until it works RIGHT.