I used to work with COBOL. The language isn’t terrible, it’s the 40+ years of no context changes that suck. It even works with SQL… although the most common configuration is using a flat file.
Given that SQL is 50 years old, I’m not surprised they go hand in hand. I’d be more surprised if it integrates seamlessly with Kafka, k8s, MongoDB or lambda.
I worked with COBOL for a good part of a decade. It’s a joy to see structured and well-commented code from pros, the consistency is such that there’s a point after a few months when you “get it”, and the code base becomes like putty in your hands.
Never have felt that way with modern platforms, with the exception of maybe Python. Old-school structured programming can be beautiful, and the tooling is super straightforward. Development these days has taken a turn for the worse in terms of sheer complexity for even simple tasks.
TL;DR: If if pays well in your market, don’t be afraid of COBOL if you’re a capable software developer. You will get it faster than you think.
It might be my area. Most COBOL infa got replaced or is on life support. But I did happen to see the good stuff once in a while. There’s a reason it was not touched.
A small part of me thinks it might be the place to retire. Working on old code bases.
My last COBOL work was in a bank that replaced COBOL with Java and minicomputers with the indies servers in a misguided effort to modernize. Before that we had five mainframe programmers, after Java we had a dozen more and no one was really sure how many layers that Java onion had. People kept piling abstractions on it in another misguided effort to make it simple.
I once tried to learn COBOL at home, I used GNU to compile but I had trouble with database driver. Any tips?
Try opencobol. You may have more success.
Some cobols like rm COBOL require a literal custom Linux header in order to work with SQL. Others work with odbcs natively.
Edited: duplicated
My last job had us maintaining a system that used COBOL and JCL. That part was very fine. The COBOL was easy to read and understand.
The most annoying thing was the coin flip in the 70s that led them to choose a Network Database over a relational one.
Its essentially a giant linked list and there are a thousand reasons no one uses them today
An old co-student back then went away for a number of months in 1998/99. Turned out he had done a job in Frankfurt for some bank before 2k for some real money. The job included a nice apartment and a chauffeur free service.
