COBOL, six decades of unstoppable journey

Early hours of Indian Standard Time at Hyderabad at home.

Just at this time while my friends at western-world making their week-end preparations and my people at India are trying get-up to find themselves in long lines of groceries or their essential needs for the month as this is the first week of month, and due to COVID 19 pandemic scene. But I am extremely nostalgic to recollect my good old days 1993 where I started thinking of Information Technology.

While browsing my linked-in I got a link which is for a webinar “Virtual Universe 2020” caught my attention at that is -  COBOL @60, Then, Now and Next.

COBOL – a short form of its name COmmon Business Oriented Lnguage, designed by CODASYL, Conference/Committee on Data Systems Languages, partly based on programming language design work by Ms.Grace Hopper (referred as Mother of COBOL) in 1959.

COBOL is the language which introduced me to the IT world. The early 90s, the start of my career, I was associated with this wonderful language which introduced me the world of IT. Am pretty sure many of the current generation are not much aware of this language and am sure they wouldn’t even have the knowledge and the power of this language existence and its impact on the current business world.

I have a personal inclination to this language as this language made me to get into Information Technology. It is not an exaggeration to quote that this language made many of Indian IT professionals on-site dream fulfilled during The Y2K challenge, which is almost 20 years ago.

After year 2000, COBOL took a back-seat in coding preferences as well as in learning preferences. Though, the reasons are many, because its long coding practices, its limitation to GUIs etc., which am not going to into details.

After twenty years now and exactly after sixty years of its inception, (COBOL language was invented and came into commercial practice in 1959) again the full circle completed and I am seeing a topic that is focusing on COBOL. This made me nostalgic to think on my early days of IT which were spent on COBOL coding on huge mainframe machines. Though I moved out of coding and programming years ago, the first days of career always nostalgic. Similarly, Even at 60 years old, this language has unstoppable journey.

A little I did research on the COBOL significance and thought to share in this article. The facts are really an eye-opener. Few facts of about COBOL which every IT professional or IT aspirant should know

·      Every year, COBOL systems are responsible for transporting up to 72000 shipping containers, caring 60 million patients, processing and connecting 500 million mobile phone users

·      COBOL equates 80% of the world’s actively used code “> 220,000,000,000 lines”

·      200 times as many COBOL transactions take place each day than Google searches

·      About 95% ATM swipes use COBOL Code

·      Everyday COBOL systems handle $3 trillion in commerce

A quick search for “COBOL programmer” on any job site, for instance, yields a few hundred job postings while the more popular “Java programmer” yields thousands. Based on these facts alone, COBOL appears to be nearly extinct. You might even wonder why writing about COBOL at all?. But looks can be deceiving.

COBOL is a mysterious paradox. Born in another era, COBOL lives on as the quiet but important pillar on which the majority of businesses stand today

As I mentioned early in the article, those who are familiar with legacy systems they know 70-80% of all business transactions worldwide are written in COBOL today. But what is not emphasized often enough is there is a slowly increase in gap between the number of massive institutions relying on COBOL and its relevancy among the programs today. While newer programmers aren’t as interested in learning COBOL, its role in millions upon millions of mission-critical transactions from healthcare to travel can’t be denied.

If someone pulled the plug on COBOL, millions of businesses worldwide would suffer from manufacturing machines. The old programming language is a bit of taboo today, but it is important recognize how big of the impact of COBOL on today’s business world.

The survey taken in 2014 by MircoFocus says that an average age of COBOL programmer is 55 years. COBOL programmers are starting to retire, meanwhile there is no interest from young programmers take COBOL Challenges. This will certainly have impact on Business-Critical operations across the world.

COBOL skills will be in demand to reverse-engineer pivotal mainframes. And as time goes on, the market will need to correct this skill gap by boosting the value of COBOL programming skills, drawing more engineers to learning the language.

Some COBOL-heavy organizations, like IBM and Micro Focus, have already developed programs to promote COBOL in younger generations. So far, IBM has developed curricula in association with more than 80 colleges and universities. Companies in Dallas are also doing something about it as well.

I am foreseeing a dire need of COBOL programmers in the current business context. Businesses must forecast and address this skill-gap issue to address their problem, who will maintain their mainframes when COBOL programmers retire in near future.

• Referecnces :
• ·      Inevitable of Return of COBOL – Hacker-rank.
• ·      Exactly what is COBOL and why is COBOL still a widely used language in IT- Geoff
• ·      COBOL Is Everywhere. Who Will Maintain It – David Cassel?