A thought about programming languages

[rotting bones]

I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. You think, in 2020, that COBOL was "before your time". The cool kids don't learn it. Your program doesn't teach it. I felt the exact same thing in 1980. Yet COBOL was thriving then and is still thriving today. It's like a whole stealth industry hidden from most developers.

But you felt like it would be a good idea to learn it, right? Did you keep that a secret? Because no one has ever told me that they are learning COBOL.

Several people I know deliberately hide their COBOL knowledge, lest they be assigned to maintenance contracts...

(In much the same way, I don't mention IIS, Websphere and Windows Server on my resume...)

Typically it's not taught in university anymore. Companies provide the training.
From what I hear it's awfully boring but kind of relaxing. carefully considering night time batches is better for your blood pressure than the "everything should be in production yesterday web projects.

I should learn it, but keep it a secret until I'm desperate. Gotcha.

[Travis B.]

Somehow I've never come across a job email or posting that has asked for COBOL, while I've come across countless ones asking for Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, and SQL, and a lesser but still significant number asking for C or C++...

[Kuchigakatai]

Somehow I've never come across a job email or posting that has asked for COBOL, while I've come across countless ones asking for Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, and SQL, and a lesser but still significant number asking for C or C++...

It may also be that seeing COBOL in the requirements puts off a lot of good candidates though. I know someone who got a job advertised as involving Java but actually involved learning, maintaining and translating a legacy system in, well, not COBOL but an old COBOL-like language, which was even worse in terms of reference resources...

[Travis B.]

It may also be that seeing COBOL in the requirements puts off a lot of good candidates though. I know someone who got a job advertised as involving Java but actually involved learning, maintaining and translating a legacy system in, well, not COBOL but an old COBOL-like language, which was even worse in terms of reference resources...

If I got a job that was advertised as being a Java developer position but which turned out to be a position maintaining code in some underdocumented COBOL-like language I would probably start a new job search ASAP unless I cared solely about job security and nothing else.

[alice]

Nobody admits to knowing COBOL.

[Torco]

the first rule of COBOL is we don't speak about COBOL

i had a similar vibe when i got into the ERP hustle: it's this huge industry that moves a hell of a lot money around and yet you don't hear about it much.

[alynnidalar]

(In much the same way, I don't mention IIS, Websphere and Windows Server on my resume...)

This is why I never tell a soul IRL that I had a multiyear internship doing stuff with SAP... if anyone asks, I have never even heard of the thing.

[Travis B.]

Maybe, for future positions, I should omit from my resume that the software product I have been working on for approximately the last two and a half years integrates with both Oracle EBS and Costpoint.