- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Show Left Links
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
Started By
Message
re: Any of you know COBOL?
Posted on 4/8/20 at 4:57 pm to Crimson Wraith
Posted on 4/8/20 at 4:57 pm to Crimson Wraith
I’m going to to be in demand. I know FORTRAN and COBOL. Do they still use punch cards?
0
Posted on 4/8/20 at 4:58 pm to FearlessFreep
It's not just governments that are "incompetent". Huge chunks of financial and other business code are written in COBOL. There are an estimated 100+ Billion lines of COBOL in use in the world. And it all works, except under extreme circumstances like we are currently seeing.
It is strictly a question of cost vs. benefit, which usually comes down to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Governments and private enterprise alike could easily budget for continuous system updates, but when things get tight these are the first expenses to get cut, mostly because the benefits are not immediately noticed. Kicking the can down the road is a problem in every organization, but especially so in government because nobody wants these "unnecessary" expenses on their budget.
It is strictly a question of cost vs. benefit, which usually comes down to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Governments and private enterprise alike could easily budget for continuous system updates, but when things get tight these are the first expenses to get cut, mostly because the benefits are not immediately noticed. Kicking the can down the road is a problem in every organization, but especially so in government because nobody wants these "unnecessary" expenses on their budget.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:02 pm to CAD703X
My step dad has programmed AS400 systems most of his adult life. Still does for one of the top employers in BR. Job security.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:03 pm to FearlessFreep
Gonna need some boomers for that
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:04 pm to FearlessFreep
Learned it in college, wrote a couple program, 1975 
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:04 pm to CAD703X
quote:TA's whined about doing that in their undergrad days. It's like telling a kid today that Windows 95 had to be installed with 73 floppies.
you haven't lived until you've dropped all your carefully programmed and sorted punch cards into a pile on the floor en route to feeding them into the mainframe...
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:09 pm to GFunk
quote:Thats what infuriates me the most. These were pretty much designed with the most rudimentary security, because they were thought of as essentially stand-alone systems. After all, who could afford the tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment it would take to hack into a mainframe in 1979?
I worked for a State Agency as a Project Manager on the SoftwareDev side for several years. We had tons of MF Systems running on COBOL. Security was terrible and PII and private business info was exposed bigtime.
Of course government-sponsored bad actors had access to such gear, and used it successfully (Clifford Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg was one of the first documented hacks sponsored by a foreign entity).
My theory is that most of these institutions (state governments and big banks) would rather risk major breaches of security with these ancient labyrinth systems than submit themselves to the humiliation of the restrictions of a “fair” bidding process for their replacement.
This post was edited on 4/8/20 at 5:10 pm
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:10 pm to FearlessFreep
Took a COBOL course in 1998. Went to the first two weeks of classes and promptly dropped that piece of shite course.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:12 pm to Korkstand
quote:
Kicking the can down the road is a problem in every organization, but especially so in government because nobody wants these "unnecessary" expenses on their budget.
Great comment, and the same goes for private industry, there's more COBOL out there running the old infrastructure/legacy stuff than you can imagine.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:14 pm to FearlessFreep
I just love where our taxpayer dollars go.
Taxpayer dollars: to universities so they can indoctrinate liberals and teach them on tech that is updated constantly to state-of-the-art levels
Also taxpayer dollars: college kid enters real world, where shite matters and we depend on certain services in critical situations, gets COBOL
Taxpayer dollars: to universities so they can indoctrinate liberals and teach them on tech that is updated constantly to state-of-the-art levels
Also taxpayer dollars: college kid enters real world, where shite matters and we depend on certain services in critical situations, gets COBOL
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:15 pm to TrueTiger
(no message)
This post was edited on 1/11/21 at 1:03 am
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:15 pm to rmc
quote:
My step dad has programmed AS400 systems most of his adult life. Still does for one of the top employers in BR. Job security.
bet he makes good money
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:17 pm to PSU2LSU
quote:
Took a COBOL course in 1998. Went to the first two weeks of classes and promptly dropped that piece of shite course.
Why did you drop it? Too tough? It's not Visual Basic, that's for sure.
Didn't want to make $300/hour in today's market?
Just curious.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:21 pm to CAD703X
AS/400, still running green screen. Probably based on RPG and not COBOL. Almost as old, but still performs well.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:23 pm to FearlessFreep
quote:
Gross incompetence, with a side order of corruption?
Article mentions CT, KS, ME, MD, MS and OK relying heavily on the 60 year old language.
I had a work-study job in a community college in AL where one of my regular tasks was to submit payroll data into the state retirement system, which ran on an IBM System 36 running COBOL. That was in 1979.
This country is so hopelessly fricked.
Hate to break it to you, but legacy/mainframe systems are far more common than you think.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:24 pm to efrad
quote:Yep. Porting all COBOL will take several decades of concerted effort and will likely cost many trillions of dollars just in the US.
The problem isn't really with learning to code or even learning COBOL, though. The problem is that they need someone who understands these complex legacy programs that are a huge patchwork mess of layered, cryptic code, the functionality of which can be strictly bound to laws and regulations. I've even heard that some of the COBOL programmers later on hired to do maintenance changes to these programs purposely obscured the meaning and functionality of certain code to make it more difficult to maintain by anyone but themselves. Anyone working on this stuff needs to know a lot more than just how to code.
Basically saying "learn to code" or "learn COBOL" for this problem is sort of like saying "laws are written in English, so English majors should be able to write law" -- it's a much more complex problem than that.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:26 pm to SamGinn Cam
(no message)
This post was edited on 1/11/21 at 1:03 am
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:26 pm to TrueTiger
I believe some government agencies still use magnetic tape for storage. Its a good backup.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:28 pm to efrad
quote:
The problem isn't really with learning to code or even learning COBOL, though. The problem is that they need someone who understands these complex legacy programs that are a huge patchwork mess of layered, cryptic code, the functionality of which can be strictly bound to laws and regulations. I've even heard that some of the COBOL programmers later on hired to do maintenance changes to these programs purposely obscured the meaning and functionality of certain code to make it more difficult to maintain by anyone but themselves. Anyone working on this stuff needs to know a lot more than just how to code. Basically saying "learn to code" or "learn COBOL" for this problem is sort of like saying "laws are written in English, so English majors should be able to write law" -- it's a much more complex problem than that.
Nice take.
Posted on 4/8/20 at 5:28 pm to Brosef Stalin
(no message)
This post was edited on 1/11/21 at 1:03 am
Page 2 of 3
Popular
Back to top
Follow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News