Does it make sense to study COBOL?

Question

I have had a talk with a friend of mine about the relative vulnerability of different types of IT workers to unexpected unemployment (e.g. layoffs, company going out of business, obsolete skills etc.)

as it seems COBOL developers (or maintainers?) seems very secure in their positions, regardless of the state if the economy or even how good they are. With so much critical COBOL code being around on the one side and the deminishing number of COBOL know-hows on the other , it actually makes sense to recommend someone starting their way in the IT world and looking for a relativity secure job to study and intern in COBOL!

what do you think ?

Answer 1

IMHO, It always makes sense to study a new language.

Answer 2

I'd say it is not a complete nonsense to learn COBOL, as long as it is not the only technology you learn.

Answer 3

I think it makes sense to be a good software developer. For me personally, your question sounds a bit like: "What silo should I occupy to feel secure about my job and stop improving myself?" I know you didn't mean exactly this. But anyway, that's not the best motivation for choosing a career path.

I'd say: try tinkering on some COBOL code. If it's fun for you, go for it! Just as for dozens of other things you should try.

Answer 4

Try it, and if you like it then study it seriously.

If you learn it too well you may find you end up stuck in a COBOL role with no way out; it begins slowly and then you are drawn in because the knowledge is very specialised. If you enjoy it, that's fine - but if you try it and don't like it, then don't continue.

Answer 5

It's true that there's a lot of COBOL code running today, and much of that code is mission critical. However, how much actual COBOL coding is happening? I see large enterprises gradually replacing those COBOL systems.

Answer 6

From a practical standpoint, there's a huge base of legacy COBOL code running a lot of systems out in the world (many of them mission-critical) and it's likely cost-prohibitive to replace all of that software any time soon. The average COBOL programmer is probably nearing retirement age. Therefore one could reasonably assume that there will continue to be demand for new COBOL programmers for some indeterminate amount of time to come.

From a personal development/enrichment perspective, it certainly makes sense to study COBOL (and any number of other technologies both new and "less-new".). I'm not sure I'd put it near the top of my list, but its historical significance is reason enough to put it on the list. Somewhere.

Answer 7

Hi

My guess is that one of the reasons COBOL programmers (I'm a Fortran programmer, similar situation I suspect) are relatively secure is because they have oodles of experience; you won't get this from learning the language. Rather than ask how many COBOL jobs are there, ask yourself how often you see a COBOL job advertised. I think that it is much easier to hold on to one of these jobs than to get one.

And, of course, when one is advertised, you're in competition with all those very experienced currently-working-in-COBOL programmers.

Regards

Answer 8

You have to understand that the arguments you made, are relative to time, that is now. We have seen time and again, how technologies seems so prominent at time t and becomes obsolete at time (t + 0.001). Though your arguments rotate around the very fact that COBOL is more or less obsolete, but they may find a new way to deal with it and again you become out of job. So here's rule number 1:

Never rely on one single technology.

With time, they always find ways to have lesser and lesser resources do the same thing. All you can do is to be a smart software professional. When you get the core part of computer programming, technologies wont matter, with time you could just learn them. So here's the second rule:

Don't just try to expertise a technology, expertise software engineering

Finally, to survive in IT you always need to be cutting-edge-aware. Also immaterial of all the above, you can still be laid off depending on the harshness of the recession. So finally:

Keep a back up line of work ready, tommorow IT industry might not be there :)

Answer 9

I started as a programmer with Cobol more than 10 years and worked with Cobol at different institutions then for several years.
Cobol as a technology is fairly easy to learn if you know any imperative programming language.
Cobol itself differs a lot on various platforms and versions - thus it is difficult to study the right version before hand.
The real challenge with Cobol is not the technology, but the complexity of the underlying business and the lack of documentation of the systems/programs. Thus the real value of a lot of COBOL experts is in fact not the actual COBOL knowledge, but the understanding of the business.

Answer 10

Cobol developers are secure in their positions because their code makes money. It is not a horrible language to learn. Actually, it is rather nice once you grok the structure of it.

But it is only one tool in your tool box, you should have several.