[HN Gopher] 20 Years in the Making, GnuCOBOL Is Ready for Industry
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20 Years in the Making, GnuCOBOL Is Ready for Industry
Author : cglong
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-03-16 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thenewstack.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (thenewstack.io)
| ddgflorida wrote:
| Well that's exciting :)
| proneb1rd wrote:
| Very exotic. Does it support multi threading? What kind of things
| can be done with it?
| foobarian wrote:
| I'm guessing it does money math in a certain way vetted by this
| field that would be very difficult to recertify on some
| replacement.
| airstrike wrote:
| For some value of "very difficult"
| seanhunter wrote:
| But you need a modern enterprise-quality framework. Can it run
| Cobol on Cogs?
|
| http://www.coboloncogs.org/INDEX.HTM
| fredsmith219 wrote:
| The vast majority of COBOL in production runs on IBM mainframes
| in conjunction with JCL (Job Control Language). If you are
| looking to offload COBOL from a mainframe to a cheaper platform
| JCL is a must. I love that this project exists but it's only one
| half of a solution to migration off of a mainframe.
| macintux wrote:
| I'm unfamiliar with JCL, but from a quick search it sounds like
| most scripts don't use much of the language. Still, I'd bet
| that most of the JCL functionality is used if you look at a
| decent-sized collection of scripts.
|
| How much of the full JCL do you think would be necessary to
| reimplement in order to get, say, 30% of the existing scripts
| to work?
| smackeyacky wrote:
| From memory of working with mainframe programmers back in the
| 1990s, it isn't just JCL you need. Cobol programs typically
| used databases and transaction monitors as well.
|
| If you're lucky the database will be one of IBM's SQL
| databases. If you're unlucky it will be something like IMS.
| guestbest wrote:
| Talking with mainframe guys for the last half decade, they seem
| to avoid JCL when they can and treat REXX like a super power.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>Get those punch cards back out!
|
| I get that's (probably!) a joke, but it misrepresents COBOL as
| something _completely_ stuck in the 70s. And, y 'know, it isn't
| exactly the fanciest language in the world, but we still have
| several programmers on our project and they're spitting out new
| code every day of their life, no punchcards:).
|
| (And it's not on a mainframe either - it's running primarily on
| AIX, with some of Windows and Linux).
| airstrike wrote:
| Let us join hands in a moment of silent prayer for those
| unfortunate souls
| ajxs wrote:
| I've spent some time working in finance, so I've actually
| worked with COBOL developers personally in multiple different
| roles. In all those cases they were maintaining legacy
| applications that ran on IBM mainframes. Why would a company
| choose to use COBOL if they weren't restricted to what ran on
| IBM's mainframe infrastructure? Serious question, not an
| attack.
|
| I get that many of these legacy applications are some of the
| most battle-tested things in existence, and do what they do
| very well. I've seen them in action personally. However I'm
| also under the impression that COBOL is just not that amazing
| compared with modern alternatives: It's not easy to write, or
| maintain, and (as far as I understand) the things that make it
| 'fast' have more to do with the platform than COBOL itself.
|
| I'd love to know more about why someone would choose COBOL
| today, if anyone can fill me in.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Nobody chooses COBOL as a language for creating new systems
| today. It is maintenance of existing systems, primarily but
| not exclusively, running on IBM mainframe and midrange
| servers.
| chasil wrote:
| We actually rely upon two different operating environments
| for COBOL that do not originate from IBM.
|
| The first is OS2200. Our final major application on this
| platform was complete by 1970, and links COBOL into assembler
| that accesses the hierarchical DMS database. The first SMP
| port of UNIX was to this hardware:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_2200
|
| The second is VMS, specifically the VAX variety. VMS bundled
| a COBOL compiler, which we used to write ACMS applications.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS
|
| We continue to produce new COBOL code for both.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Are you able to find COBOL programmers to hire, or is it
| like Rust where a lot of jobs are "know C++ and we'll train
| you"?
| stevenally wrote:
| COBOL is my next career move. I'm tired of these modern
| languages.
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| > the past three years, it has received attention from 13
| contributors with 460 commits.
|
| That doesn't sound like very many commits. Pretty mature!
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