April 7, 2008
Programming for Mainframes Makes a Comeback
Mainframe programming is decidedly un-sexy in the IT industry. But as the baby boomers skilled in maintaining mainframes retire, there is heightened demand for IT graduates to replace them, says The Chicago Tribune
Mainframes have been around for decades, but have decreased in popularity in favor of distributed computing solutions in which tasks are doled out among multiple smaller computers. COBOL or assembly language might as well be Sanskrit in the programming world.
However, many large companies still prefer to use mainframes, which are often run by an aging workforce still fluent in those “dead languages.”
Unsurprisingly, IBM, the largest producer of mainframes, has furnished Illinois State University with its System z 890 in order to train more students in mainframe technology. —Hurley Goodall
Posted on Monday April 7, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Humph, 10 years ago I was told that COBOL would be making a huge resurgence, and that I should learn so that I could capitalize on an emerging job market.
I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. I think we are much more likely to see a number of transition projects as companies upgrade to a client-server structure. A short resurgence of COBOL, followed by the lowest demand since it’s creation.
— Dan Apr 8, 10:42 AM #
15 years ago RPG made a similar “resurgence” … COBOL will be around for awhile, but there’s little incentive to write any new applications using it.
— CW Apr 8, 11:07 AM #
Mr. Goodall is correct – while COBOL may not be perceived as the “sexiest” career path for IT graduates, there is certainly a demand for recent graduates with COBOL skills. This is a programming language that still does quite a bit of the heavy lifting for an enormous amount of mission-critical applications.
This fact is being recognized not only by the organizations searching for COBOL programmers, but by those responsible for educating them. The Academic Connections (ACTION) Program we run at Micro Focus, which is designed to help universities teach COBOL and modernization skills, now works with almost 50 US universities. Without developing the skills to bridge the gap created by Baby Boomer retirement, we’d see some IT infrastructures come to a grinding halt. Perhaps that’s why COBOL programmers are earning higher salaries than their peers after graduation.
— Arunn Ramadoss Apr 17, 11:52 AM #
COBOL does not pay very good salaries. I also think the reason for this is the skills you would gain from learning COBOL. COBOL is not like any other language in its syntax at least, therefore if you learn how to for example loop in COBOL is totally different to C, Java, C++, C#, JS, VBS.
A lot of university for some strange reason are again teaching COBOL but it’s at the expense of the students as even if the jobs are not highly paid, there are limited jobs out there (unless you want to relocate – try a search in your area).
To you students don’t do a COBOL course and learn stuff like C-ISAM, JCL, MVS, oh yeah, and how to use punched cards to program. Do stuff like C, Java, SQL if you want a job.
Oh almost forgot you don’t need to do COBOL to understand business logic – is now what they are claiming just to scrape that last bit of revenue from a language that is dead (and yes its the truth – it don’t matter if we have 1000000 billion lines of it – WHERE ARE THE JOBS!!.
— Paul Apr 25, 08:38 AM #
Here’ some proper research – unbiased ( I don’t work for a COBOL company)
I was a fairly recent graduate, and guess what I got my first job as a COBOL developer. I have been a COBOL developer for three years since graduating. I can truly say I wish I stayed away from COBOL and so should all you recent graduates.
It really doesn’t matter whether or not there are 70 billion lines of COBOL and all that other stuff; if you can’t get a job in this area (trust me I’ve been looking). All you have to do is type COBOL in a job search (and there we have it – the last time I got 40 hits) – “COBOL IS DEAD” if you want to
get a job. When you narrow down your search to say London and you only get about 7 hits – so if you want to work as a software developer stay away from COBOL.
It really doesn’t matter if some developer says “COBOL is not dead, I’ve recently got a job in COBOL”. These people probably been programming in COBOL for a life time (that’s like 25 years) so you are competing with these guys for those handful of jobs.
It really doesn’t matter if one says “there will be plenty of jobs when these old people retire and a company will give you loads of money if you have COBOL experience”. They may give people with COBOL skills loads of money to fix a bug but how often do these bugs cause faults (remember if its
working don’t touch it). So you maybe sitting unemployed for years before anything goes wrong, waiting for your one off big contract payment (sounds like too much of a risky investment).
Anyway I’ve been looking for work out their and finding it very hard (almost impossible) to find a job. I am a First Class graduate and have a Masters and even with these academics three years of doing COBOL has crippled my chances. I wish I had not done COBOL and stayed with the skills (what you should be learning at university) that have jobs. I have got 3 years COBOL and someone has 3 years of Java or C or C# etc.. so I am out of the competition when looking for jobs. Don’t listen to those that say it don’t matter what the language is (because it does), all you have to do is look at the job specs (they generally mention the programming language because it really does matter).
I am now hoping to build on those skills at university and then will keep trying to apply for jobs. I am also hoping to do some courses to refresh my knowledge in areas I have neglected over the last three years (which from my experience you don’t get from COBOL and my opinion is this language should not be taught at university). Certainly its IT and you have too keep up with recently skills set (that’s RECENT!! skills set), but why get into the position I am in and many (I hope not too many) recent graduates may be in.
I know this is very negative and may not read well, but COBOL has made it very difficult for me to forward my career and I really don’t want this to happen to any other graduate.
Basically “COBOL is truly dead” if you look at it from the perspective of your career. Go out there, do the research and see the truth for yourself !!
PS: Try a search at the very least on CWJobs.co.uk for the word COBOL and type in London as the location.
— Peter Apr 25, 08:49 AM #