is COBOL worth learning?

hi everybody
COBOL is in my course this semester. i think it's quite an old language(and i'm not much interested to learn it). i just wanted to know if it's still being used anywhere?

Definatly! A lot of companies still need Cobol programmers b/c their original programs were written in Cobol, and in most cases it's more cost effective to maintain code that rewrite it in another (modern) language. Heck, I even had a guy in one of my classes that programmed for a company in Ada!

Hehe - only good if you like working at banks. /shudder

Actually, most banks use Mumps, not COBOL, though many are switching over to SQL now. Hospitals also use Mumps heavily.

But you could get a COBOL job converting a company's code so that it won't crash on the year 2000. Oh wait...

The current trend is to migrate COBOL apps to Java. IBM is largely responsible for this migration, as COBOL tends to reside on their mainframe/midrange servers. Personally, I would avoid the language and concentrate on more modern offerings (Java, C++, etc).

You mean Canadian banks?

COBOL is dead even in banking. BTW - working for a bank doesn't mean one has to work at a bank.

I'm not sure if it is completely dead - IBM did just release a new version of COBOL this month, w/ native XML handling

However, I think that the trend definitely is to migrate mainframe/midrange development to Java, at least w/in IBM.

It's a fairly easy language to learn, so I would say yes, it's worth it.

Check out: http://www.cobolreport.com/pp/

Anywhere from 2.5 million (4 years ago) to 3 million. (14 years ago)

Anyone else see a little flaw in his logic for counting the number of COBOL programmers?

Actually, that's pretty sad. Even on a pro-COBOL site, they couldn't fudge the numbers enough to not show a decline in COBOL programming.



In 2000, 87% use COBOL, but only 45% of them would continue, making it 39% of them would still use it in the next decade. And since 30% would decline their use, that ends up being only 27% that will continue using COBOL as much as they are today in 10 years. And that's of a poll from people who decided to respond to them. That doesn't look good for COBOL's future.

I can only attest to what I've experienced in this area. All of the COBOL programmers I've known are either transitioning to Java, moving on to become Business Analysts, retiring, etc. The key thing is that new COBOL apps generally aren't being built (from what I've seen) - just maintained until they're moved off of to equivalent Java apps. So, COBOL's use hasn't died completely - it just isn't growing.

What counts as a COBOL programmer? Someone who knows how to or someone who actively does it?

If so, count me as a COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, Lisp, RPG-II, 8086 Assembler, VMS Assembler, QBASIC, native C (no ++), etc. programmer in addition to the stuff I otherwise do.



That seems incredibly skewed. It might be like walking into a bar and asking how many people drink then projecting that data against the entire US Population. From what demographic did the respondents come from is the primary question.

I'd say actively programming in. For instance, I /can/ code ASP, but I don't. However, I do /actively/ code Java/J2EE, PHP, etc.

If it's in your course, I suppose you don't have much of a choice but to learn it. Can't hurt. COBOL is not dead, it is still used in the finance and investment banking sector. Albeit not a lot, but it's still around.