8 years ago
6
The Inevitable Return of COBOL
Learn just how influential the 1959 COBOL programming language is today and why it will become an in-demand skill for developers in the near future.
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http://blog.hackerrank.com
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Yeah, COBOL isn't going anywhere and there will always be demand to keep the frankensteins that use it alive.
However, if you learn COBOL you are instantly tying yourself to an extremely dated language and you kind of pigeon hold yourself into one particular area of computing. Is the money worth that? What's the median salary for a COBOL engineer? I would imagine it's an absurd amount of money to dull the pain of working with COBOL.
You sound like a programmer is only allowed to use one language. Where I work we have legacy systems in Cobol and new development in Java, some Android work, and we're Web Applications. All these need maintenance on occasion and having potential job candidate come in with some Cobol experience gives them a leg up on everyone else, it doesn't mean that Cobol is the only thing they are going to work in.
Just because I know how to use a hammer doesn't mean I can't learn how to use a wrench. Programming languages are tools, the more tools you know the more you can do,
No kidding, I'm surprised by the 30% that do! Any time COBOL was mentioned in my CS program was to talk about it like a relic.
Maybe I should go through with my plan to learn COBOL after all...
Infinite job security! You won't have to look for a job ever again - I'm not sure if that's a blessing or a curse though.
I hope that the COBOL being written today is for existing applications and not new ones.