The Holy Grail of Jobs
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Ok, so keep in mind it is the year 2011... AD. Monster.com decided to forward along this ad for me to consider: http://jobview.monster.com/GetJob.aspx?JobID=98900661[^] It's a fucking entry level COBOL position! Has an entry level COBOL position existed anywhere in the last 20 years? Oh these kids coming out of universities are just loaded with COBOL knowledge! I took 1 COBOL course, in 2000, and it was the last year it was taught at my school. The pay isn't complete shit for the level of experience either (1-2 years / $45-65k plus bonus) I love the name of the company: Accero Formerly Cyborg Systems Did they just choose a random word from a Sci-Fi movie in 1960? Which is when I presume this company was founded.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
"We need to hire a Cobol programmer.Do you know anyone?" "Yes, but we should hurry cause he has max 2 years left to live" Disclaimer: None Just a joke :)
All the best, Dan
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There are still a lot of schools teaching a COBOL class and $45k plus bonus and benefits is more than double my first job out of college. The true irony is that I constantly get calls from recruiters wanting me to go somewhere for 3 months, have 10+ years etc, and work for $45k with no benefits. So all-in-all compared to everything else, it is quite a good opportunity for anyone at that level. I would forward it to some novice.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
There are still a lot of schools teaching a COBOL class
Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
I would forward it to some novice.
Do you think it is a good idea for someone to start their development career path on a pretty much dead language though?
Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
$45k plus bonus and benefits is more than double my first job out of college.
It's more than I made at my first job out of school 5 years ago. I'm glad report I'm doing much better now.
Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
The true irony is that I constantly get calls from recruiters wanting me to go somewhere for 3 months, have 10+ years etc, and work for $45k with no benefits.
I have less experience than you, but get the same silly calls. When I mention my rate and perk requirements, they even get offended.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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Ok, so keep in mind it is the year 2011... AD. Monster.com decided to forward along this ad for me to consider: http://jobview.monster.com/GetJob.aspx?JobID=98900661[^] It's a fucking entry level COBOL position! Has an entry level COBOL position existed anywhere in the last 20 years? Oh these kids coming out of universities are just loaded with COBOL knowledge! I took 1 COBOL course, in 2000, and it was the last year it was taught at my school. The pay isn't complete shit for the level of experience either (1-2 years / $45-65k plus bonus) I love the name of the company: Accero Formerly Cyborg Systems Did they just choose a random word from a Sci-Fi movie in 1960? Which is when I presume this company was founded.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
i had to teach myself COBOL last year, to the job i'm doing now.
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"We need to hire a Cobol programmer.Do you know anyone?" "Yes, but we should hurry cause he has max 2 years left to live" Disclaimer: None Just a joke :)
All the best, Dan
MDL=>Moshu wrote:
Yes, but we should hurry cause he has max 2 years left to live
You optimist! Look outside of the window, an ambulance is coming this way. :)
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i had to teach myself COBOL last year, to the job i'm doing now.
I hate to say it, but it was rather fun to play around with for a class. Totally odd and a step backwards but fun. I doubt it would be much fun to work with though.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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I hate to say it, but it was rather fun to play around with for a class. Totally odd and a step backwards but fun. I doubt it would be much fun to work with though.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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Be familiar with modern software architectures, including systems developed using COBOL One line from the add that caught my eye.. isn't that sorta like "military intelligence" ? Two things that just don't go together.
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning.
COBOL is now available to run under .NET or JVM, has proper OO, and you can run your applications on Windows, Linux, Unix or up in the cloud. Oh, and we've demonstrated them running on android phones too. That modern enough for you? See: http://visualcobol.microfocus.com/[^] or http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/cobol_update/[^]
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COBOL is now available to run under .NET or JVM, has proper OO, and you can run your applications on Windows, Linux, Unix or up in the cloud. Oh, and we've demonstrated them running on android phones too. That modern enough for you? See: http://visualcobol.microfocus.com/[^] or http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/cobol_update/[^]
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"We need to hire a Cobol programmer.Do you know anyone?" "Yes, but we should hurry cause he has max 2 years left to live" Disclaimer: None Just a joke :)
All the best, Dan
Hey now -- I don't quite resemble that remark, as I'm in my latter-50s. I did a huge amount of COBOL work through the 70s and 80s, and was paid well to create and deliver a COBOL course for Y2K fixers in 1999. One of the most fun aspects of my career was being a member of the CODASYL COBOL Committee for a few years.
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"We need to hire a Cobol programmer.Do you know anyone?" "Yes, but we should hurry cause he has max 2 years left to live" Disclaimer: None Just a joke :)
All the best, Dan
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COBOL is now available to run under .NET or JVM, has proper OO, and you can run your applications on Windows, Linux, Unix or up in the cloud. Oh, and we've demonstrated them running on android phones too. That modern enough for you? See: http://visualcobol.microfocus.com/[^] or http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/cobol_update/[^]
paul_the_kelly wrote:
COBOL is now available to run under .NET or JVM, has proper OO, and you can run your applications on Windows, Linux, Unix or up in the cloud. Oh, and we've demonstrated them running on android phones too. That modern enough for you? See:
http://visualcobol.microfocus.com/[^] or http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/cobol_update/[^]:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: I would much rather be writing structured COBOL, then fixing the scattered mindless dribble, in the Language of the month, that comes out of most of these hot shots that call themselves programmers today. 400,000 11 x 17 scanned images converted from tiff to Xerox Image format printed at 136 pages a minute every 5 days, all done with COBOL. Oh and wrote to 9-Track and 3490E Cartridge tapes too, from COBOL, under dos. Where was that Job located? It may solve my headache of dealing with DeVry Grads, that think they are programmers.
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Ok, so keep in mind it is the year 2011... AD. Monster.com decided to forward along this ad for me to consider: http://jobview.monster.com/GetJob.aspx?JobID=98900661[^] It's a fucking entry level COBOL position! Has an entry level COBOL position existed anywhere in the last 20 years? Oh these kids coming out of universities are just loaded with COBOL knowledge! I took 1 COBOL course, in 2000, and it was the last year it was taught at my school. The pay isn't complete shit for the level of experience either (1-2 years / $45-65k plus bonus) I love the name of the company: Accero Formerly Cyborg Systems Did they just choose a random word from a Sci-Fi movie in 1960? Which is when I presume this company was founded.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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COBOL is now available to run under .NET or JVM, has proper OO, and you can run your applications on Windows, Linux, Unix or up in the cloud. Oh, and we've demonstrated them running on android phones too. That modern enough for you? See: http://visualcobol.microfocus.com/[^] or http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/cobol_update/[^]
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Ok, so keep in mind it is the year 2011... AD. Monster.com decided to forward along this ad for me to consider: http://jobview.monster.com/GetJob.aspx?JobID=98900661[^] It's a fucking entry level COBOL position! Has an entry level COBOL position existed anywhere in the last 20 years? Oh these kids coming out of universities are just loaded with COBOL knowledge! I took 1 COBOL course, in 2000, and it was the last year it was taught at my school. The pay isn't complete shit for the level of experience either (1-2 years / $45-65k plus bonus) I love the name of the company: Accero Formerly Cyborg Systems Did they just choose a random word from a Sci-Fi movie in 1960? Which is when I presume this company was founded.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
My school still teaches us COBOL, for exactly that reason. (That, and the middle-aged teachers still think that COBOL is fun.)
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Ok, so keep in mind it is the year 2011... AD. Monster.com decided to forward along this ad for me to consider: http://jobview.monster.com/GetJob.aspx?JobID=98900661[^] It's a fucking entry level COBOL position! Has an entry level COBOL position existed anywhere in the last 20 years? Oh these kids coming out of universities are just loaded with COBOL knowledge! I took 1 COBOL course, in 2000, and it was the last year it was taught at my school. The pay isn't complete shit for the level of experience either (1-2 years / $45-65k plus bonus) I love the name of the company: Accero Formerly Cyborg Systems Did they just choose a random word from a Sci-Fi movie in 1960? Which is when I presume this company was founded.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
Seriously... I don't care what anyone says about Visual Cobol, this language only lives because of the sheer amount of code written in it in the 1970s for business systems. Aren't the vast bulk of airline scheduling systems just screen-scraping old COBOL programs that are running on IBM mainframes and minis? Ugh. May as well resurrect TRS-80 Level II BASIC while we're at it. READY >
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Ok, so keep in mind it is the year 2011... AD. Monster.com decided to forward along this ad for me to consider: http://jobview.monster.com/GetJob.aspx?JobID=98900661[^] It's a fucking entry level COBOL position! Has an entry level COBOL position existed anywhere in the last 20 years? Oh these kids coming out of universities are just loaded with COBOL knowledge! I took 1 COBOL course, in 2000, and it was the last year it was taught at my school. The pay isn't complete shit for the level of experience either (1-2 years / $45-65k plus bonus) I love the name of the company: Accero Formerly Cyborg Systems Did they just choose a random word from a Sci-Fi movie in 1960? Which is when I presume this company was founded.
Craigslist Troll: litaly@comcast.net "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
I came up writing COBOL back in the 80's and 90's. And while I realize its been all the fashion to bash COBOL, worldwide there are still hundreds of millions of lines of COBOL code that have been running (and continue to run) without incident for 30+ years. That is a feat which I don't see any of the "modern" languages being able to duplicate. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I could go back to COBOL unless I absolutely had to - particularly since I started coding in both VB.NET and C# some years ago. But all of the old COBOL folks are starting to retire in droves there aren't many people left who can maintain those systems. That's probably one of the reasons for the high salary for an entry-level position.
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I've seen that sort of stuff before, but never heard from anyone who actually used it. Can you just take your old decades of cruft ridden mainframe apps and recompile them; or is major fiddlage required first?
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Most cruft-ridden mainframe apps will recompile without too much major fiddlage, but some things may require tweaking. There's also a managed (.NET only at the moment) version of CICS - see http://www.microfocus.com/aboutmicrofocus/pressroom/releases/pr20100712268224.asp[^]
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One more question, how does the result look if you then reflect it back into C#/Java?
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It depends on what is you expose to Java or a .NET language. You could use COBOL to marshall your COBOL style data into strings, integers, or whatever else you needed (the Visual COBOL compiler makes this very easy) and those would be just as you expected when read from another language. You can write classes in COBOL that will appear to .NET or Java code like any other managed objects, and use these as an interop layer into existing procedural COBOL.
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Hey now -- I don't quite resemble that remark, as I'm in my latter-50s. I did a huge amount of COBOL work through the 70s and 80s, and was paid well to create and deliver a COBOL course for Y2K fixers in 1999. One of the most fun aspects of my career was being a member of the CODASYL COBOL Committee for a few years.
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I've got a friend in his 40's who did 50% COBOL/50% other stuff until a few years ago. He's mostly doing SAP now.
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