Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Cobol

There's a word (acronym) that rarely appears in headlines. However, when scanning tech news headlines, there it was: Cobol: Grace Hoppers gift to the world of business.

Cobol was the first computer programming language that I used when working with the Bank of America in San Francisco in the mid 1960s. Cobol was followed by several other programming languages when I was still writing code. When the personal computer appeared, I learned a few more languages. I still enjoy writing code. Today's code is Basic macros for Excel spreadsheets.

I am still a nerd. A couple of years ago when Sudoku was the new rage, I wrote a program to solve the puzzles. To me that was more fun than solving the puzzles.

With a programming refresher, I could solve Sudoku puzzles with Cobol. Then I could apply for one of those Cobol programming jobs. That is the conclusion according to a quote from the article:
As the number of developers who cut their teeth on Cobol dwindle, and universities take Cobol off their curriculum, demand for programmers with the skills to maintain legacy Cobol applications is increasing.
Back to programming in Cobol! That would certainly be a life change for this guy who hasn't had a job in 13 years and hasn't programmed for a living since 1980.



Note: My puzzling preference are crosswords.
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5 comments:

  1. UnknownDecember 10, 2013 at 1:45 PM

    COBOL??? That brings back memories. Took a FORTRAN & COBOL class in college. Lesson learned was you could bribe a buddy at the computer center with beer to get more than one turn around a day. Haven't used COBOL since.

    Hope you are keeping warm in Yuma. Cool here in Phoenix.

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  2. Barney, The Old Fat ManDecember 10, 2013 at 4:36 PM

    My first programming language was MAD. That was before compooters I think.
    Glad to see you are still kicking around Daryl.

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    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 11, 2013 at 2:04 PM

      Thanks for the reminder. Someplace near Fredericksburg is where I first meet Daryl, his wife and you.

      Delete
  3. DonDecember 11, 2013 at 9:11 AM

    Jeez, that's scary; if people don't learn COBOL then how are they going to read it in order to recreate in some other language? Should be tough for some legacy systems. And I'm like you, I don't want to go back to coding.

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    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 11, 2013 at 2:08 PM

      Cobol should be easy enough to read since it reads like English; "MOVE FIELD-A TO FIELD-B". Yeah. Right. Maintaining any code is not easy -- regardless the language used.

      Delete

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