Re^3: Perl myths ?

[adrianh]

... highly doubt that there are any new COBOL projects in the works

Then prepared to be surprised ;-) There are a heck of a lot of new COBOL work in the works. I know a couple of people doing COBOL development work and they're continually in work - a lot of it new code (and they're paid very well for it too).

According to this little list of COBOL facts Gartner are predicting that 15% of new code in 2005 will be in COBOL.

[stvn]

Wow, no doubt Grace Hopper is smiling in her grave right now. While I guess I am really not that surprised, but I am afraid,.... very afraid ; P

-stvn

[jdtoronto]

Be very surprised!

Certainly within the financial services sector thorughout the western world COBOL is still king. I can think of several Cobol shops I know of that have upwards of 50 programmers each. One, with over 120 runs a COBOL school of their own to take programmers and train them in COBOL. One friend of mine, a project manager working on large COBOL jobs, was asked by a mutual friend who is a C++ project manager why he was earning so much. The answer was pretty obvious, "I am in demand, you are just one of very very many".

jdtoronto

[adrianh]

The answer was pretty obvious, "I am in demand, you are just one of very very many".

Indeed. Some more stats from Gartner:

There are over 90,000 COBOL programmers in North America in 2002. Over the next four years there will be a 13% decrease in their number due to retirement and death.

There's more COBOL work than ever, and fewer skilled people. If you're comfortable working in the industries where COBOL is dominant then it's an excellent career choice. It's not going away any time soon.