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Not mocking cobol devs but yall are severely underpaid for keeping fintech alive (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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[-] affiliate@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

what i’m gathering from this thread is that i should learn cobol

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

From when this has come up in the past, it's a lucrative career path, but probably tricky to break in to since nobody's maintaining a COBOL system they can afford to put into the hands of someone inexperienced.

The dudes earning half a million are able to do so because they've been at it since before their boss was born.

[-] Knusper@feddit.de 14 points 11 months ago

Yeah, and from what I understand, learning the language itself isn't the hard part. It actually has rather few concepts. What's difficult, is learning how to program a computer correctly without all the abstractions and safety measures that modern languages provide.

Even structured programming had to be added to COBOL in a later revision. That's if/else, loops and similar.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 11 months ago

It seems that back in the day, people effectively ran a simple compiler by hand on paper. It could work pretty well; Roller Coaster Tycoon was famously written in assembly.

[-] pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works 8 points 11 months ago

Once you get into it you'll wonder how you ever programmed without "divisions"! I mean honestly, just declaring variables anywhere? Who needs that. Give me a nice, defined data division any day 😌