COVID-19 Response: New Jersey Urgently Needs COBOL Programmers (Yes, You Read That Correctly)

[fenderman]

COVID-19 Response: New Jersey Urgently Needs COBOL Programmers (Yes, You Read That Correctly) - Joseph Steinberg: CyberSecurity Expert Witness, Privacy, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisor

New Jersey desperately needs COBOL Programmers. That’s what the State’s Governor, Phil Murphy, apparently meant today, when he said at a press conference that the State needed volunteers who with “Cobalt” computer skills to help fix 40-year-old-plus unemployment insurance systems that are...

josephsteinberg.com

 

[sebastiantombs]

Can't blame Comrade Murphy for this one. It's been festering since the 80's and no one, absolutely NO ONE, has ever addressed this problem. It's not only the Unemployment system, how about the entire State IT system, from fingerprints to fire arms, from court records to criminal records, all are running on 40 year old systems.

 

[tigerwillow1]

There would be a good job market for me if it was Fortran instead of Cobol.

 

[Oceanslider]

COVID-19 Response: New Jersey Urgently Needs COBOL Programmers (Yes, You Read That Correctly) - Joseph Steinberg: CyberSecurity Expert Witness, Privacy, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisor

New Jersey desperately needs COBOL Programmers. That’s what the State’s Governor, Phil Murphy, apparently meant today, when he said at a press conference that the State needed volunteers who with “Cobalt” computer skills to help fix 40-year-old-plus unemployment insurance systems that are...

josephsteinberg.com

Damn, Trump messed up again?

 

[mat200]

COVID-19 Response: New Jersey Urgently Needs COBOL Programmers (Yes, You Read That Correctly) - Joseph Steinberg: CyberSecurity Expert Witness, Privacy, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisor

New Jersey desperately needs COBOL Programmers. That’s what the State’s Governor, Phil Murphy, apparently meant today, when he said at a press conference that the State needed volunteers who with “Cobalt” computer skills to help fix 40-year-old-plus unemployment insurance systems that are...

josephsteinberg.com

They probably should check the nursing homes....

 

[sebastiantombs]

What really, really, frosts me is that they're trying to fix an outdated, antiquated, mainframe system rather than update the whole thing. Of course, they wouldn't be able to waste money on their little pet projects if they did that. I remember when Y2K came along they had about six floors for the Hughes Justice Complex full of programmers trying to make sure that wouldn't crash things, and that was just in the law enforcement end of things. There had to be a similar situation over in the Unemployment Department as well. It would take a lifetime just to clear out all the useless code that's in those systems now IF you could find enough people that really know COBOL to even have a look at it. More examples of "fine management" by governmental entities.

 

[tigerwillow1]

More examples of "fine management" by governmental entities.

Having worked for a big company, I think they are not much better. One of our slogans was "There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over."

 

[megazone23]

There would be a good job market for me if it was Fortran instead of Cobol.

I'm suddenly a hot guy , it has been 2x years since I last used COBOL and Fortran in commercial environment... oh wait.. volunteers?

 

[Arjun]

May be you can help them remotely

I'm suddenly a hot guy , it has been 2x years since I last used COBOL and Fortran in commercial environment... oh wait.. volunteers?

 

[jack7]

The Governor said the State needed volunteers with “Cobalt” computer skills.

Google search result:
"Cobalt Blue is an open source programming language written in C# and the executable it produces runs on top of Cobalt's sister project, the Viper runtime. The Cobalt Blue Programming Language. Cobalt blue (or simply cobalt) is a java like language targeted on Viper."

COBOL volunteers need not apply.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Trust me, it's COBOL, not cobalt. He's a politician that hasn't got a clue about computer languages.

 

[samplenhold]

Cobalt? COBOL?

 

[samplenhold]

An interesting read...did not realize that ATMs use COBOL.

What Is COBOL, and Why Do So Many Institutions Rely on It?

From ATMs to government systems, COBOL still powers many of our most critical systems. And that's a big problem.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[LauraYuan]

The problem is more than just a Lack of COBOL programmers. But the general unwillingness of Management to hire non-COBOL programmers to do the work. Most skilled developers really don't care about the language, when given a new language to code in, they will pick it up rather fast. Also, there is an unwillingness for new Devs to apply to COBOL jobs because they are often dead ends, keep the server running 40 years old program alive, putting you in an area where any new exciting project you will be left out on.

While in the end it is just compiled machine code. Newer languages give you features that prevent excessive code to do common tasks. It ads in extra security and stability features, to prevent buffer overflows or injections. Even that good old Try, Catch, Except commands which have been responsible for a great improvement in the stability of the software, while it can be argued it creates sloppy code, it also catches and fixes errors that may not have been considered at the time.

 

[tigerwillow1]

Opportunity spreads to the west coast....

"Oregon is recruiting retired computer system developers familiar with both the antiquated coding language COBOL and the state’s unemployment insurance system to help fix ongoing problems with the Reagan era technology. "

Oregon enlists retired computer programmers to aid beleaguered Employment Department

 

[mat200]

Wow.. talk about how ill prepared these states are for any economic kick in the nutz...

imho as Laura Yuan suggests.. these code bases really need to be redone in a modern language. LOL I am guessing right now some of these code bases probably will have buffer over runs or similar when the number of unemployed exceed some variable limit on the system. Yes, time to redo it and drop the inability to keep the code up to date.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Very true statement, but it's about 20 years past when that should have been done. Let's face it, when it comes to IT State governments are still in the video terminal world of thought and have no clue of how to change that. I think they may be forced to this time and maybe move on to something more modern, like Commodore Basic next.