{"id":55460,"date":"2022-08-31T14:01:48","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T14:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/?p=3992939"},"modified":"2022-08-31T14:01:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T14:01:48","slug":"why-even-hipster-developers-should-consider-learning-cobol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=55460","title":{"rendered":"Why even hipster developers should consider learning COBOL"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id>\n<p> Understanding multiple clouds can pay big career dividends for developers. But so can COBOL, and here\u2019s why. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3985657\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3985657\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3985657\" src=\"http:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/why-even-hipster-developers-should-consider-learning-cobol.jpg\" alt=\"Programmer developer typing script source languages coding symbols icon development project data programming software engineering IT technologies computer. 3d rendering.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3985657\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image: Chaosamran_Studio\/Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<aside class=\"pinbox right\">\n<h3 class=\"heading\">Must-read developer coverage<\/h3>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Though most developers are proficient in just one cloud, if any, there are smart reasons to become adept in at least two, as Google\u2019s Forrest Brazeal has <a href=\"https:\/\/cloud.google.com\/blog\/topics\/hybrid-cloud\/the-career-benefits-of-multicloud-fluency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">argued<\/a>. As the thinking goes, no enterprise is able to resist the gravitational pull of running services from more than one cloud, making management of diverse environments a valuable skill.<\/p>\n<p>If this is true of multicloud environments, wouldn\u2019t something similar be true of hybrid cloud environments? More specifically, shouldn\u2019t it be true of COBOL programmers with cloud expertise?<\/p>\n<h2>The modernization imperative<\/h2>\n<p>COBOL was created by researchers at IBM back in the 1960s. Decades later, COBOL is no longer <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/top-programming-languages-2022\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">cracking anyone\u2019s top-25 list<\/a> anytime soon, yet it is still omnipresent. By some <a href=\"https:\/\/fingfx.thomsonreuters.com\/gfx\/rngs\/USA-BANKS-COBOL\/010040KH18J\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">estimates<\/a>, there are still more than 220 billion lines of COBOL code running in production. Eighty percent of in-person transactions depend on COBOL. So does your money, with 43% of banking systems running COBOL.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SEE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/resource-library\/whitepapers\/research-managing-multicloud-in-the-enterprise-benefits-barriers-and-most-popular-cloud-platforms\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">Research: Managing multicloud in the enterprise; benefits, barriers, and most popular cloud platforms<\/a> (TechRepublic Premium)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Despite this prevalence of COBOL, relatively few developers know it, and those that do tend to be older: 41.7% of COBOL developers are 45\u201350 years old, and just 11.5% are under 35.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re one of those younger developers, this is an opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>When pressed to determine which IT budget categories would be last to get cut if a recession hit, digital transformation comes in second only to security, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EricJhonsa\/status\/1537976954288152577\/photo\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">according to Morgan Stanley Research<\/a>. When companies talk about digital transformation, they\u2019re talking about modernizing old systems, among other things. Those systems include mainframes running COBOL.<\/p>\n<p>Enterprises will tend to put off the difficult task of modernizing mainframe applications, but as TCS (the global system integrator) has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tcs.com\/blogs\/mainframe-modernization-enterprise-cloud\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">written<\/a>, \u201cBy modernizing mainframes, enterprises can significantly reduce their technical debt. In an integrated mainframe-cloud environment, enterprises can leverage the flexibility of cloud to run business applications and optimize cost and bulk on the mainframe for its transactional and computational power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At a certain point, the cost of modernizing COBOL-powered mainframes is overcome by the benefits of doing so. What\u2019s missing is the expertise to do so.<\/p>\n<h2>Speaking COBOL and cloud<\/h2>\n<p>Scroll through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indeed.com\/jobs?q=cobol&amp;l&amp;from=searchOnHP&amp;vjk=03543e6c065d5684\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">Indeed.com\u2019s COBOL job listings<\/a>, and you\u2019ll see most of them are focused on maintaining legacy mainframe applications. That\u2019s a good use of COBOL expertise, but it\u2019s not the best use.<\/p>\n<p>Brazeal argues that \u201cexpanding your scope of professional fluency to at least two of the three major U.S. cloud providers (Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure) opens up some unique, future-optimized career options. As companies\u2019 cloud posture becomes more complex, they need technical leaders and decision-makers who comprehend their full cloud footprint,\u201d which will typically involve more than one cloud and plenty of non-cloud.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SEE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/resource-library\/downloads\/aws-lambda-a-serverless-computing-framework-a-cheat-sheet-free-pdf\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">AWS Lambda, a serverless computing framework: A cheat sheet (free PDF)<\/a> (TechRepublic)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In other words, though companies will often turn to SIs (system integrators) like TCS or Accenture to help them modernize applications, they also rely on their own employees to help navigate such change. Just as it\u2019s helpful for an employee to understand multiple clouds to provide an \u201corganization-wide understanding of your technology landscape,\u201d so, too, would it be helpful for employees to understand legacy COBOL applications to more cogently consider how best to move them to the cloud.<\/p>\n<p>As explosive as cloud growth has been, it remains less than 10% of global IT spending. That means there\u2019s an incredible amount of on-premises code, including COBOL, just waiting for modernization. Sure, you could, and arguably should, learn the cool kid languages, like Python and Rust, but if you want to make yourself indispensable to your company as it seeks to modernize, then maybe you should learn COBOL.<\/p>\n<p><em>Disclosure: I work for MongoDB but the views expressed herein are mine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding multiple clouds can pay big career dividends for developers. But so can COBOL, and here\u2019s why. Image: Chaosamran_Studio\/Adobe Stock Must-read developer coverage Though most developers are proficient in just one cloud, if any, there are smart reasons to become adept in at least two, as Google\u2019s Forrest Brazeal has argued. As the thinking goes, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,783,345],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud","category-cloudsync","category-digital-transformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}