hi /g/,
I'm going to be starting my first programming job next week (Student placement type thing). They said I'd be working with COBOL.
This will be my first programming job ever. What can I expect?
>>54669882
COBOL
>>54669882
just shoot up a little bit of meth before you show up so you look focused and energetic.
Imposter syndrome. Everyone will be better than you and you will feel like an autist. For every language you know there's a Asian that knows it ten times better
>>54670015
This. I've worked as a developer for a few months now. I feel like I don't deserve my job
>>54669882
>COBOL
No, they were just making fun of you..
Nobody works with Cobol, not anymore.
It has been banned by the Convention on Human Rights a long time ago. Back when COBOL was legal, it was a dark age. Man, I've seen some shit..
>>54670015
>For every language you know there's a Asian that knows it ten times better
This.
>>54672175
Cobol derivates like ABAP are still widely used
>>54672175
>>54672330
Where I work COBOL is used quite a bit. It's a decent size company that has been around for a while, so they just never got shit changed over.
>>54669882
I'm so sorry.
>>54672577
Bank, right?
>>54669882
Suicidal thoughts.
>>54670015
>there's a Asian that knows it ten times better
asians please go
I just googled COBOL. What the fuck is this?
>>54673363
enterprise code from the 60's
>>54673409
Why would anyone still use this language?
>>54672175
There are tons of businesses using weird old shit like COBOL. Not everyone works for gay startups where they hire trannys and diversity officers to write codes of conduct for rails projects
>>54673445
old legacy code. companies too lazy to upgrade to something newer
>>54669882
>COBOL
Are you future-posting from the 70s?
Honestly OP any company that hires an intern to code in COBOL probably just gets off on destroying dreams. It's a trap. Leave this company and go live on an island.
>>54669882
>COBOL
Legacy shit.
You won't me making anything. You'll just be managing and updating ancient shit.
Which was mess of spaghetti with gotos when it was new, years of "maintenance" will have only made it worse.
Most of your worktime will be spent reading the documentation to whatever godforsaken codebase you deal with.
No one is going to actually understand most of it because that's a lot of fucking effort.
The rest of your worktime will mostly be bugfixing very slowly while updating the documentation.
>>54672175
I work for the National Bank of Canada and everything we do is in COBOL with SQL.
No one will ever rewrite this monster of a codebase, they'll still roll with it in a hundred years.
>>54674552
Shit. How complex can it be to rewrite bank software? It's just moving money and calculating interest.
>>54670777
I know that feel x10000
>>54674983
>Shit. How complex can it be to rewrite bank software? It's just moving money and calculating interest.
If it was that simple it would have been done decades ago. Banking is heavily regulated and all code has to be tested, tested, tested and checked. No bank wants to suffer a big law suit.
The COBOL code is effectively self-documenting. It's stable. It has been debugged to within an inch of its life. The number of known-good, working subroutines approaches infinity. And most of the code is FOSS.
New applications are the main activity because the old stuff has achieved "functional stability".
COBOL coders have a career path that has no end.
>>54674983
>>>54674552
>Shit. How complex can it be to rewrite bank software? It's just moving money and calculating interest.
Regulatory requirements, and more. The paperwork makes it harder than you may think.
>>54675165
>Don't rewrite the software, goy. It would be way too exp-- COBOL is stable and tested!
ITT: People don't know there employers exist out of the latest bubble in Cali and have been running software systems for many many years.
>>54669882
This is "Hello World" in Cobol:000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000200 PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD.
000300
000400*
000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000900
001000 DATA DIVISION.
001100 FILE SECTION.
001200
100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
100100
100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.
100300 BEGIN.
100400 DISPLAY " " LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.
100500 DISPLAY "Hello world!" LINE 15 POSITION 10.
100600 STOP RUN.
100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.
100800 EXIT.
Godspeed, OP.
