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IBM scrambles to find or train more COBOL programmers to help states:
The economic stresses of the coronavirus pandemic have created a surge in demand for COBOL programmers. Last week, for example, the governor of New Jersey put out a call for COBOL programmers to help fix problems with the software that runs the state's unemployment insurance system.
A new initiative from IBM seeks to connect states with experienced COBOL programmers—and to train a new generation of them.
"In the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, our clients are facing unprecedented circumstances," an IBM press release says. Some states "are in need of additional programming skills to make changes to COBOL—a language that has been widely reported to have an estimated 220 billion lines of code being actively used today."
A new online forum, co-sponsored by the Open Mainframe Project, aims to connect COBOL programmers to people wanting to hire them.
At least this time they're offering to pay.
Previously:
COBOL-Coding Volunteers Sought as Creaking Mainframes Slow New Jersey's Coronavirus Response
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @07:35PM (1 child)
if dumb whores would quit working for these scumbags they wouldn't get away with treating people like that.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 16 2020, @02:12PM
The problem is that they probably don't have the chops to get a good job. So they are happy to work for the scumbag who is unable to realize how bad a job they do. The scumbags pay them what they think they are worth because of their low quality of work. Thus other employers are encouraged to similarly underpay.
In 1979 I recognized the phenomena where lots of incoming freshmen thought that computer science was a way to get rich quick in the new gold rush. Problem is, while they could learn the most basic (pun intended) statements of a language, they could not put them together in any coherent sequence to accomplish even the simplest goal. Read the lines in this file, if the 3rd field is greater than 50 then print the first field.
Even in non freshmen there were amazing things. In assembler, on this one 24 bit machine, when you had a string, you would count the number of words that string occupies as every 3 characters is a word, plus any final one or two characters take an entire word. This one guy thought it was necessary to count the words taken up by comments in the assembler source code. Just no conception of what is actually going on.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.