IBM Launches New COBOL Training Initiative

[Don Shepherd]

(04-14-2020 06:03 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  IBM Launches New COBOL Training Initiative

In High School in the early 70's, we had access to a PDP-8 via 110-baud dial-up link to a neighboring town's private/exclusive school system, on which we able to use FOCAL, BASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL. The instructor demonstrated to us that a working COBOL program could be caused to generate 3+ pages(!) of error messages during the compile phase by simply misplacing a single period.

When asked 'Why then would one want to learn COBOL?' he replied 'To be sure you can always get a programming job!' He emphasized, somewhat prophetically, that 'there will always be a demand for COBOL programmers, for at least 50 years.' I sure would like to be able to track him down today to show him this article.

Oh my gosh. Several days ago the head of the unemployment office in Louisville explained on TV why they were so unprepared for the onslaught of new claims, saying the automated response system could not be reprogrammed to accomodate the tremendous demand. It didn't occur to me that they would still be running a COBOL-based system. Didn't I tell you at HHC2017 that punch cards would make a comeback!

I wrote COBOL programs on DEC and VAX computers for NASA back in the 1980's. I didn't like COBOL as much as FORTRAN, but I never would have dreamed it would still be active 35 years later.