this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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I'm a COBOL developer. For old COBOL systems it's not just a case of it being expensive to "migrate away", it's extremely risky and for no significant benefit.
Businesses have essentially two options, modernize what they already have, or tear everything apart and start from scratch. COBOL programs don't "just work", they're good at what they need to do (business transactions). Therefore, there isn't a significant need to rewrite everything, especially when it's possible to modernize and reuse existing business logic contained within COBOL programs. For example, COBOL programs aren't tied to old hardware, you can run your COBOL applications on the cloud instead. This is much safer and cheaper than rewriting everything.
I work primarily in a Long Tail language (languages don't die, but they have a long tail where usage slowly creeps away). I tell the business that we could ultimately solve all the problems with the platform except for one: finding new programmers to hire for it. That's what will ultimately force us to migrate. Doesn't have anything to do with cost or ability to take on new features or handle new ways of doing things.
When it comes to COBOL developers, there are a lot of developers retiring but there are also a lot of programmers being trained in COBOL every year. It's for this reason that the average age of COBOL developers has stayed roughly the same for the past 2 decades despite retirements. But that said the total number of COBOL developers is decreasing.
It is certainly an issue. Not many young programmers want to learn COBOL. COBOL isn't taught in many educational institutions. There are very few online resources that programmers can use to self-teach COBOL. More often than not people are trained in COBOL by their employer. I didn't know how to program in COBOL until I started at my current company (and even then I stumbled into this position accidentally because I wasn't aware that junior developer jobs in COBOL existed when I graduated university).
It's a shame.
I feel this way about mainframes sometimes too, I had a class in mainframes but we weren't really taught about job options or where they still fit in the industry.