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from the portents-of-future-ecma-script dept.
The Enterprises Project writes about how the demand for several very specific, established skills, including COBOL, is increasing as boomers retire, taking their knowledge with them. Part of the skill gap between the old and the new is familiarity with the work flow and business processes.
Baby Boomers are retiring and taking with them the skills to run legacy technologies upon which organizations still (amazingly) rely – from AS/400 wrangling to COBOL development. That leaves many CIOs in a tight spot, trying to fill roles that not only require specialized knowledge no longer being taught but that most IT professionals agree also have limited long-term prospects. "Specific skill sets associated with mainframes, DB2 and Oracle, for example, are complex and require years of training, and can be challenging to find in young talent," says Graig Paglieri, president of Randstad Technologies.
Apparently, COBOL is still in use in 9 percent of businesses, mainly in finance and government. And so the demand for COBOL is gradually growing. If one has interest to pick up that plus one or more of the other legacy technologies, on top of something newer and trendier, there should be a possibility to clean up before the last of these jobs moves to India.
Earlier on SN:
Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89 (2017)
Banks Should Let Ancient Programming Language COBOL Die (2017)
Honesty in Employment Ads (2016)
3 Open Source Projects for Modern COBOL Development
(2015)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:02PM (3 children)
Fuck's sake... Am I really the only one here who sits down and learns languages just because I'm not yet proficient in them? Old or new doesn't matter. Is it the right tool for the job is what matters. Mechanics think finding an antique but functional tool is awesome but code monkeys seem to scoff at anything not brand new. I think it's because they're insecure in their lack of experience and want to force everyone into an environment where nobody has any experience.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @11:19PM
No,
I'm currently faffing around with Haskell, on my to-do list is Go, Rust and R, on my refresh list, Octave.
The thing is, I'm no longer in the IT/programming game, so I'm doing it purely for my own amusement, edification and occasional pet projects, when I was doing it for a living I had little free time on the job to try out any languages other than the ones in use at my places of employ, and back then, my free time was spent well away from computers (6 days a week @18 hours per day for 50 weeks a year for over a decade was enough time staring at screens).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:39PM (1 child)
After you have a few languages under your belt, ones in different categories, what's the point of learning more? You'll need X years of skill in them if you want to switch jobs into that language and you won't get that through personal projects. You shouldn't start using that language at your current job as then that forces everyone else to learn your current pet language. If your work culture allows that, then you'll also be learning everyone else's pet languages and you'll end up with a support nightmare and crappy code.
So where's the gain? If you want to spend time on self improvement, get better at the tools you already know and learn more concepts. You don't need to learn a full language to learn a new concept.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 06 2018, @12:13AM
Because it's interesting? Not everything needs to be about money. Money is just a means to an end and it's not even always the correct tool. I mean, I'm not going to catch more flatheads on a $50 lure than I am on a jug line with a live bluegill on it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.