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A comment on Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on?.

Re:Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on? by RSHEPP on Friday July 18, 2025 @10:06AM (#44604792)
My mother and her husband are COBOL devs for a US state government. She works on the health insurance side for teachers and other state employees. Think claim processing.

Lots of batch jobs running at night. Their alert system is an actual human who calls my mom when jobs fail in the middle of the night.

It's high paying for the city they live in, but not high paying for software development. They will both have full retirement and healthcare for life, assuming the government can fulfill it. They are both fully remote since COVID too.

She's also worked for state lottery, teacher's retirement system and DOT.

edit: she says they have a SQL database, but mostly store in IBM IMS

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on? by Lyngbakr on Friday July 18, 2025 @10:42AM (#44605188)
Is it entirely maintenance or does she also build new stuff with COBOL?
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Re:Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on? by RSHEPP on Friday July 18, 2025 @11:44AM (#44606032)
She says it's both. By new stuff, it's mostly one off programs that handle small changes to the way billing or claims are handled. It sounds like they have a library of programs to start with and she extends it to fit the new edge case.
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Re:Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on? by agnishom on Friday July 18, 2025 @11:10AM (#44605536)
By state, you mean US state, right?
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Re:Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on? by RSHEPP on Friday July 18, 2025 @11:42AM (#44605998)
Correct. Updated.
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Re:Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on? by ninja3925 on Friday July 18, 2025 @11:36AM (#44605898)
Very likely.
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Re:Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on? by gaws on Thursday July 31, 2025 @07:53PM (#44751550)
> They will both have full retirement and healthcare for life, assuming the government can fulfill it

Are they not worried about getting DOGE'd?

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