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* [COFF] COBOL.
@ 2020-04-13 17:59 crossd
  2020-04-13 18:09 ` 
                   ` (4 more replies)
  0 siblings, 5 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: crossd @ 2020-04-13 17:59 UTC (permalink / raw)


So I imagine that most readers of this list have heard that a number of US
states are actively looking for COBOL programmers.

If you have not, the background is that, in the US, a number of
unemployment insurance systems have mainframe backends running applications
mostly written in COBOL. Due to the economic downturn as a result of
COVID-19, these systems are being overwhelmed with unprecedented numbers of
newly-unemployed people filing claims. The situation is so dire that the
Governor of New Jersey mentioned it during a press conference.

This has led to a number of articles in the popular press about this
situation, some rather sensational: "60 year old programming language
prevents people filing for unemployment!" E.g.,
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html

On the other hand, some are rather more measured:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/cobol-programmers-answer-call-unemployment-benefits-systems

I suspect the real problem is less "COBOL and mainframes" and more
organizational along the lines of lack of investment in training,
maintenance and modernization. I can't imagine that bureaucrats are
particularly motivated to invest in technology that mostly "just works."

But the news coverage has led to a predictable set of rebuttals from the
mainframe faithful on places like Twitter; they point out that COBOL has
been updated by recent standards in 2002 and 2014 and is being unfairly
blamed for the present failures, which arguably have more to do with
organizational issues than technology. However, the pendulum seems to have
swung too far with their arguments in that they're now asserting that COBOL
codebases are uniformly masterworks. I don't buy that.

I find all of this interesting. I don't know COBOL, nor all that much about
it, save for some generalities about its origin and Grace Hopper's
involvement in its creation. However, in the last few days I've read up on
it a bit and see very little to recommend it: the type and scoping rules
are a mess, things like the 'ALTER' statement and the ability to cascade
procedure invocations via the 'THRU' keyword seem like a recipe for
spaghetti code, and while they added an object system in 2002, it doesn't
seem to integrate with the rest of the language coherently and I don't see
it doing anything that can't be done in any other OO language. And of
course the syntax is abjectly horrible. All in all, it may not be the cause
of the current problems, but I don't know why anyone would be much of a fan
of it and unless you're already sitting on a mountain of COBOL code (which,
in fairness, many organizations in government, insurance and finance
are...) I wouldn't invest in it.

I read an estimate somewhere that there are something like 380 billion
lines of COBOL out there, and another 5 billion are written annually
(mostly by body shops in the BRIC countries?). That's a lot of code; surely
not all of it is good.

So....What do folks think? Is COBOL being unfairly maligned simply due to
age, or is it really a problem? How about continued reliance on IBM
mainframes: strategic assets or mistakes?

        - Dan C.

(PS: I did look up the specs for the IBM z15. It's an impressive machine,
but without an existing mainframe investment, I wouldn't get one.)
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2020-04-15  6:58 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2020-04-13 17:59 [COFF] COBOL crossd
2020-04-13 18:09 ` 
2020-04-13 19:30   ` crossd
2020-04-13 22:22   ` krewat
2020-04-13 20:40 ` clemc
2020-04-13 21:27 ` thomas.paulsen
2020-04-13 22:24 ` dave
2020-04-13 22:28   ` lm
2020-04-13 23:58   ` clemc
2020-04-14  9:24   ` skogtun
2020-04-14 10:06     ` dave
2020-04-14  8:18 ` wobblygong
2020-04-14 16:11   ` cym224
2020-04-15  6:58   ` thomas.paulsen

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