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Is there a future in cobol

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i have been studying cobol for over a year now and am a little concerned at the lack of exposure it gets, i am looking ultiamately
for employment in this field is there any future in it or am i wasting my money on training?

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Is there a future in cobol

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COBOL has remained in the computer industry for many years (far too many for many people). It has played a part in the why the Y2K situation is at hand. Experienced COBOL programmers are being sought out at the moment to fix various problems before the end of the year. The key word was experienced though. Companies tend not to want to rely on the inexperienced to handle such problems when the deadline is lurking so close. With the fact that millions upon millions of lines of legacy COBOL code is out there, you should be able to find a job when you’re done. COBOL doesn’t get press because it’s not the ‘gee whiz’ stuff like Java that’s being developed now. It’s old hat, and thus few in the trade press pay much attention to it. Be prepared towork in a big iron type shop (ie. on a mainframe). These tend to be very departmentalized, and you’ll be given one or at most a couple types of things you’ll be doing. Not something I like personally. I like to get my hands dirty… networking, sysadmin’ing, programming

Is there a future in cobol

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Is there a future in cobol

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I would say definately learn it. My background is 6 years VB/C/C++. However, in the last 2 years, I have been developing applications using COBOL on both a VAX platform and a mainframe, along with maintaining my other skills.

My current employer hasbegun creating a web-presence for their most-used mainframe transactions.

These are generally CGI front ends, that call mainframe transactions and then return the data to be displayed on the web page.

Many companies with lage investmentsin mainframes are taking this approach.

So, we have 3 different types of people in the company
1) Web/VB developers to develop the cleint side
2) Hard-core COBOL programmers to do the mainframe side
3) People like myself and others that can doBOTH sides atthe same time.

Which would you consider the most valuable? So far, it’s been #3 for my company and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Is there a future in cobol

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Is there a future in cobol

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Cobol seems to be keeping up with times. There are newer object oriented versions of COBOL. Alot of companies like the language because it does not have the complexity to it that other object oriented languages have, therefore it is easier to train people. Personally I think that COBOL is going to be around quite a while and all of the mainframe applications are not going to be re-engineered into JAVA, VB etc.

Is there a future in cobol

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Have a look at Fujitsu COBOL, this allows VB and COBOL to interact. There is talk now of OO COBOL, so watch this space.

Is there a future in cobol

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Is there a future in cobol

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I have been programming in RPG, which is like COBOL only for smaller businesses where I get to program the whole spectrum of the enterprise software, since shortly after RPG was invented, which has got to be over 30 years ago.

I like doing everything that my employer has to offer to a programmer … COBOL shops tend to be much larger than RPG shops in which the programmers end up having to specialize.

The old tried & true languages stick around for decades because it is cheaper to fixthem up with the newer versions of those languages than to convert the applications to the latest gee whiz language that comes along that might not be around for more than a few years.

I do not believe there is a future for COBOL or RPG or the other “bigger than a PC” languages on the internet front, rather other languages are needed to get enterprise data to the browser in a secure manner & communicate back the needs of the internet user unfamiliar with the corporate data base structure.

Is there a future in cobol

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Is there a future in cobol

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I agree with most of the other answers
you got and you can go to http://www.cobolreport.com
and get a Free Issue of IEEE Software Magazine that shows Cobol has at least 15
years future!!!
C C++ Java Visual-Basic are not yet
alternatives to Cobol.
OO Cobol will be around soon.
Also get training on Databases (ORACLE SQL…)

Is there a future in cobol

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