COBOL[ocks]

seanos

A gener thread i suppose to bitch about how bad COBOL is, and anything COBOL releated.

I had the misfortune to do COBOL for the last year in College - yes there is still colleges in Ireland that lecture COBOL :-/

Well Leave you with the thought :

COBOL & FORTRON are to programming as mustard & Ketchup are to cake!

Martyr

Apparently, COBOL is still being used, but mainly for maintaining old software.
Companies still need COBOL programmers...in fact a few companies that settled here in Ireland had to get the COBOL programmers from other countries like China and South Africa.
You can download PowerCOBOL from fujitsu, its sorta like Visual Basic i think, paint shop pro interface.Select your boxes, drop down menus..etc
Point, click and drag, insert your code.

bonkey

A lot of the dislike of COBOL is nothing but snobbery, IMHO.

Yes, it is not the neatest, coolest language on the planet. On the other hand, it is one of the hardest languages to write obfuscated code in - and believe it or not but this is an incredibly massive advantage when it comes to writing real software for real businesses.

IMHO, the worst thing to happen to COBOL was the introduction of things like OOCOBOL and Visual COBOL. Here, the language is being "shoe-horned" to do something which it is patently not suited for.

On the other hand, if you look at the processing someone like a bank does on their mainframes nightly - COBOL is pretty much perfect for the task. Easy to write, easy to maintain, and actually very fast for what it was designed to do.

You can s****** and laugh at it all you want, but the simple fact is that it has its uses.

I've written in COBOL. And PL/1.

People thought VB was innovative, but Telon had been doing almost exactly the same thing on mainframes for over 10 years. Telon, incidentally, is a "COBOL generator" where you painted your forms, and then inserted "custom" COBOL at specific points...which correspond almost exactly to today's event-driven models.

Laugh at COBOL all you like. I'll happily take an exorbitant salary to code in it once its unpopular enough to make consultants very very sought after.

I'm a programmer. I program. Language is incidental.

jc

Baz_

Originally posted by bonkey
I'm a programmer. I program. Language is incidental.

Most important point ever

Lemming

I too have programmed in COBOL. As much as I don't like it, I must agree with Bonkey in two respects. Fior the likes of banking transactions et al. it is perfectly suited for it. Secondly, it is very easy to read (and was designed that way originally so non-programmers could read it).

On another note .......

COBOL = Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language.

The Corinthian

Actually, I actually rather like COBOL... :cool:

Originally posted by bonkey
Laugh at COBOL all you like. I'll happily take an exorbitant salary to code in it once its unpopular enough to make consultants very very sought after.

Indeed. Always causes me to smile at geek politics, where many will turn their noses up at COBOL or VB(A), and then complain about lack of work. The unfashionable languages are often far more stable, work-wise. You’ll never starve if you are able and willing to code in COBOL or VB(A), for example.

I'm a programmer. I program. Language is incidental.

You tell ‘em sister!

seanos

Ow....
Yes theres jobs, for people with 5ish years experience....it's still horrible, to anyone who has done COBOL :
Invalid Decimal Data!
I rest my case