I'm curious about the current state of COBOL and its applications in today's world. Specifically, I'm wondering: 1) What types of businesses, if any, would consider using COBOL if they were starting up now? Is it mostly for legacy systems? 2) Are there any open-source COBOL codebases, and if proprietary, what kind of intellectual property do they protect? 3) Is there any new development happening within the COBOL community, or are the majority of COBOL programmers just maintaining existing code?
1 Answer
There's definitely a lot of talk about COBOL because of the programmer shortage, but job postings are scarce, and the pay isn't great. It's more about keeping legacy systems alive than starting new projects. If you're looking to learn COBOL, it might be fun, but just know that most jobs will be maintaining the existing code rather than writing new software.
So, are you learning it just for the job opportunities or out of interest in the language itself?