Wanted urgently: People who know COBOL so states can process unemployment claims

[hurl]

Feeling a bit old, I can speak COBOL.
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(CNN)On top of ventilators, face masks and health care workers, you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.
...
For instance, with more than 362,000 New Jersey residents filing for unemployment in the past two weeks, the 40-year-old mainframes that process those claims are being overloaded.
...
COBOL, which stands for Common Business Oriented Language, is a computer programming language that was developed back in 1959, according to the National Museum of American History.
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"The general population of COBOL programmers is generally much older than the average age of a coder," Steinberg said. "Many American universities have not taught COBOL in their computer science programs since the 1980s."

More at link:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html?

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

1. Yeah, much older - they basically looking for people who have already retired.

We have this problem where I work too. Businesses/government are slow to change their tech and they are starting to feel the pain because of it.

[Steelrolled]

6. Part of the "never change a running system" mentality.

After having also been in the industry for many years, I appreciate the sentiment. There are many software systems that have run for decades without change. But you have to also be prepared for the event that you have to touch it.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

10. It becomes a problem when the program runs well for a long time

and no one touches it. They stop employing anyone to handle it, but then one day they actually need a change and they are screwed because no one is around anymore that knows how the thing works. And just knowing the particular programming language doesn't mean you have a clue what the original designers were thinking when they made it, how it works, interfaces with other programs, etc. Chances are it is poorly documented too. Fun stuff.

[Steelrolled]

15. Reverse-engineering is a big part of software engineering.

Doing it well is a special skill, even more than writing good new code. Documentation has become more rare over time.

[Blue_true]

21. What you pointed out is why more modern languages come with development notes,

that explain the intent of every major block of code. But yes, the point that you made about companies and government firing people that could repair old systems is valid, normally those people are among the "older" employees that are first to be fired during headcount reductions.

[gibraltar72]

2. And stone tablet chiselers.

[Girard442]

3. I took a course in COBOL aeons ago.

Learning the language should be a ho-hum. Dealing with antediluvian mainframe apps that are now more patches and mods than original code — that’s the main challenge.

[ConnorMarc]

4. I'm pretty sure at least one or two of my college professors may answer that call

And I graduated in 1999.

That was one of the first courses I took, I think in my first two years.

WoW! The memories.

[OnDoutside]

5. I learnt COBOL in university in the 80s, so that fits. Haven't used it

since, though I have 25 years RPG. This year I've learnt a bit of Stored Procedures for DB2 SQL.

[Steelrolled]

8. I don't care what they call it

but there are a lot of systems running what is, at their "core", System/360 (pun intended).

[OnDoutside]

11. I remember a company selling Time management system sitting

on a refurbished PDP-11....yet charged a lot of money for it.

[Steelrolled]

12. Availability of hardware is the issue in many dead systems

like PDP-11 and VAX. What is remarkable about System/360 is that it still more-or-less exists on modern hardware, running applications from the 1970s. The joke was that you will never get fired for choosing IBM, but there is truth to it.

[OnDoutside]

14. Very true. My first real work computer was on the System/36 and

then the S/38. I still use the AS/400 / iSeries, which is a phenomenal machine.

[sinkingfeeling]

17. Yep, a Z14 can still run a program written for a 360.

[SharonAnn]

7. I know COBOL, used it for years, am in my early 70's.

Actually, I probably last used it in the 1980’s.

[ConnorMarc]

19. You should go for it

Will you answer the call?

I'm sure they'll pay handsomely.

[Blue_true]

22. You may be able to work from your home. nt

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. "There'll be lots of postmortems and one of them on our list ..."

" ... will be how did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?"

Hey, genius, every time it was suggested you move the system to a modern platform/database/programming language, you shot it down because it cost money.

THAT's how you got here.

From an old retired COBOL thru Java programmer, "We told you so".

[HipChick]

13. Exactly...

[sinkingfeeling]

16. Is New Jersey really still running on System 370s or Amdahls?

[Crabby Appleton]

18. im retired

but when last working, I inherited the management and supervision of the mainframe programmers, mostly COBOL but some asembler.
my first full-time job I preformed maintenance programming in COBOL.

I don't want a job.

[MurrayDelph]

20. I'm with you

In 1982, I took a job teaching for DEC so that I'd never have to code in COBOL again.

I'd found my way to the payroll department of an aerospace company and was frustrated with their "don't rewrite it structured, just throw in a patch" attitude.

[hurl]

24. Sounds familiar

My first employer had a contract with the government to process all Medicare Part B claims for the entire US. The system was already decades old and clunky by the time I arrived in the early 90s, with some COBOL but mostly assembler. We were forced to use assembler because that was the only language fast enough to process the massive volume of Medicare claims in a nightly batch. Maintenance was awful, and on-call rotation for the nightly batch cycles was worse.

Another company, GTE, low-balled a bid to get a fat contract with the government to rewrite the entire system on a more modern platform. After some years in development, that project eventually fell apart completely and was abandoned.

Modern IT has relied extensively on offshoring development to save costs, but offshore COBOL expertise seems pretty limited too.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

23. DB2 and IMS exerience required?

Yep, I'm old...

actually old enough that I coded in Assembler for over 7 years! Ancient!!!