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Discussion on: Where are the old developers?

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kuuminshs profile image
Bugs Devy

COBOL now is a hole of gold, if you work in banking.

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erebos-manannan profile image
Erebos Manannán

Yea, if you happen to be one of the people capable of and interested in still working on it, and have the connections to get work for it.

If there were tons of people available for it, it wouldn't be one.

What really financial institutions should do, is invest in upgrades for their systems, and set up a continuous development plan, which they can easily afford.

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jfrankcarr profile image
Frank Carr

Getting approval for upgrade plans go something like this...

"The upgrade project committee meets for 2 hours every other Tuesday like they have for the past 3 years. Once they settle on a design then it will go to the planning board for approval. After that it will go to the executive budget for review. If they sign off on it, then we can move it to the information systems architecture committee."

Basically, it's a 10+ year process, or used to be.

There are some new federal banking regulations driving a lot of new development at financial institutions that have been slow upgrading. You'll find a lot of ancient COBOL, VB6, PowerBuilder and Gupta code that's needing to be upgraded or replaced ASAP. I passed on that when I was looking for work earlier this year since the pay was low and the projects stank of desperation and micromanagement.

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

This is a very interesting article on the subject: It’s COBOL all the way down