On 5/23/2012 3:39 PM, Roberts, John J wrote:
When the last Cobol programmers walk out the door, so may 50 years
of business processes within the software they created. Will you be
ready?
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227263/The_Cobol_Brain_Drain?
taxonomyId=154
Ed, Interesting article and fairly accurate IMO.
This is what I can foresee happening:
(1) Many companies will try to offshore their COBOL application support. But
this won't work so well because it is hard enough to understand these systems
without facing the complications of language and arcane terminology. And the
young ones back in Bangalore will want to do Java, not COBOL.
(2) Other companies will want to recruit overseas, either for CS grads that
they can train, or for those few that are willing to invest in COBOL learning if
that is what it takes to punch that H1B ticket. But even so, once here they are
all going to be looking to do something else, not COBOL. So that company that
recruits and trains a COBOL resource is going to be looking for a replacement
within a couple years.
(3) Efforts to train new young COBOL resources are going to flop, as the
article mentions. Again, everyone expects COBOL to be a career dead-end once
beyond a 5 to 10 year transition period.
Not everyone.
(4) In the end, US companies are going to be forced to pay a premium just to
hang on to their old-timers long enough to buy time to implement that new ERP
package or new custom application. The ones that will be successful doing this
are going to be the ones that accommodate their senior developer's desires: lots
of time off, telecommuting, job sharing, benefits, etc.
John
Ahem. We can help.
Our problem is reaching the right people. We have a low
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even after more than three decades of providing top quality
training to many mainframe organizations. Just too tech-y and not
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So, everybody: help us and your company out: find out
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+ Works with the web - COBOL CGIs can handle transactions
from the web, accessing data from VSAM or DB2,
then formatting output web pages (HTML) that
include the requested information
- can even serve up audio, video, and other
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Thanks.
--
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
303-355-2752
http://www.trainersfriend.com
* To get a good Return on your Investment, first make an investment!
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