COBOL – Still standing the test of time

Re:COBOL – Still standing the test of time by jimt1234 on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @02:48PM (#28542818)

The contract offers my mother received involved good money, but that was actually part of the problem. She got the impression that most of the managers at "Big Corp" had little/no regard for these "critical" systems; they were just looking to save their own jobs, either by way of a miracle worker (wave a magic wand and fix 40 years of tech debt in 3 months) or a fall guy (it's the contractor's fault, not mine).

Also, COBOL work is kinda crap. Debugging 20-year-old Java code sucks, but a 40-year-old COBOL project, with source code backed up to 5-inch floppy disks - forget about it. (I just watched the trailer for 'The Many Saints of Newark'. LOL)

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Re:COBOL – Still standing the test of time by catmanjan on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @10:02PM (#28547069)

It needs to be breathtaking money to be worth it when you take into account the risk of investing in a shrinking skill set

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Re:COBOL – Still standing the test of time by markus_zhang on Thursday September 16, 2021 @12:35PM (#28553907)

I think it depends. On my side, I'm OK with a modest salary if it's stable for the next 10-20 years. I think mainframe fits perfectly. It's declining but not that fast. It's unattractive so you face little competition. It's just a hell lot hard to get in in the middle of your life.

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Re:COBOL – Still standing the test of time by Zababa on Thursday September 16, 2021 @06:14PM (#28558431)

You can get that with a regular developer job with the threat of your job being a dead end.

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