Modern Cobol?
Cobol is older than most programmers in the profession today. Yet the demand for Cobol programmers remains steady. An article in the 10/23/2008 issue of InfoWorld tells why.
Cobol in a Nutshell
Cobol is an acronym for COmmon Business Oriented Language. The language has been used in business systems since the earliest days of computing.
Cobol Programmers in Demand
One poster at Slashdot views the demand for Cobol programmers this way:
A company can spend a few million dollars rewriting and thoroughly testing a replacement system. Or they can spend less than 10% of that to have one Cobol developer keep the system up and running.
Very often, the old systems have been working smoothly for many years. A rewrite will bring a monstrous amount of headaches and cost, especially for key systems like financial transactions.
The Big Picture
More important than the article about Cobol: Software professionals must not marry themselves to one way of doing things. A wider selection of tools can lead to better solutions. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Does that mean we need to run out and learn Cobol? Probably not. However, the Cobol approach to problem solving may lead developers to better solutions for today’s projects.