If it’s true that every cloud has a silver lining, then the silver lining in the coronavirus mega-cloud may well be COBOL.
COBOL? The 60-year old “common business-oriented language”? The joke of millennial IT professionals? The secret love of programmers who coded on mainframes while listening to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida?
Don’t you know that I’m lovin’ it?
‘Cause COBOL is back. Big time.
According to AARP (who else still knows about COBOL programmers?), COBOL is still being used to process as much as $3 trillion worth of transactions per day. Among those transactions are unemployment benefits. With COVID job losses reaching unprecedented numbers, many states are finding themselves ill-equipped to handle the load with so few active COBOL programmers available.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy observed, “Not only do we need health care workers, but given the legacy systems we should add a page for [COBOL] computer skills.”
If you’re a COBOL programmer looking to re-live your glory days, check out this IBM web page, set up to help connect experienced programmers with the state agencies that need them.
And even after we get COVID under control, COBOL programmers will be in demand to help needed transitions from legacy systems to newer software.
It’s a brave new world.