College Students: Want To Earn More? Take a COBOL Class 270
jfruh writes: With a lot of debate over the value of a college education, here's a data point students can use: at one Texas college, students who took an elective COBOL class earned on average $10,000 more a year upon graduation than classmates who hadn't. COBOL, dropped from many curricula years ago as an outdated language, is tenaciously holding on in the industry, as many universities are belatedly starting to realize.
The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different (Score:5, Informative)
I looked in to Cobol rolls as a potential career shift as I keep reading on Slashdot how amazing a Cobol job can be...
After a quick scan of most UK job sites for Cobol in London (where all the banks are ..) e.g.
http://www.indeed.co.uk/Cobol-... [indeed.co.uk]
Pretty much all roles are £40l-£60k a year and require some kind of real world, commercial experience with Cobol/mainframes etc etc
That's not that exciting, The salaries are lower than equivalent positions in other areas of development. You have to work for someone like Lloyds. Chances are you'll need to wear a suit to work. Have to work in London. By definition, you're going to be supporting ancient, systems which have undergone years of maintenance by probably dozens of different developers and it's going to be super enterprisey, loaded to the gills with change control and red tape, etc etc.
I don't get it.. sounds awful..
You can't earn a lot while working for others (Score:5, Informative)
Working for others may get you a decent living, but if you really, and I mean, REALLY want to earn a lot of money, working for others won't make you rich
I started by working for high tech companies, some decades ago. Yes, I did earn really decent wages, much better than most of my peers at that time. But I didn't stop there
When I was working, I noticed niche markets that were not being fulfilled. I got out and started my own companies (plural) to do just that
Some of the companies I sold to others, some I kept. A lot of people are working with me right now, but I gotta tell you, no matter how much I pay them (and yes, I do pay my co-workers very handsomely) they still do not earn as much as I
The moral is very simple --- if you really want to be wealthy, stop being a worker, and start being an entrepreneur
Personally, I LIKE working for the man! (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking for myself, I like working for the man! I get to spend my entire workday (consisting of reasonable work hours) doing something I enjoy (Enterprise IT architecture.) Yes, "The Man" makes more off me than they pay me (they are a profit-making company, after all!)
But in return for the 6% Net Profit they report annually, The Man does all the things I don't want to, like Sales, Marketing, Legal, Accounting, Administration, Management, Benefits, etc. I don't want to do those things myself, nor am I particularly interested in figuring out how to manage somebody else doing those things for me.
I do well enough... I'm on track to retire comfortably at 50 after years of doing work I enjoy and working with people I like (and don't have to manage!), and I have a lot less stress than a serial Entrepreneur.
If doing all that scut-work, or managing others to do it for you, is what floats your boat, more power to you! But it's certainly not for everyone.
Re:You can't earn a lot while working for others (Score:5, Interesting)
Non sequitur. Your life experiences do not dictate universal truth.
Your success as an entrepreneur does not mean that others will find the same success; your 'moral' isn't well supported. The risks of entrepreneurship are well known (and are obviously one of the main reasons we aren't all entrepreneurs). You are demonstrating survivorship bias [wikipedia.org].
Your point that successful entrepreneurs earn more than company employees, depends on which company employees we look at. I'm willing to bet the top people at Bank of America pull down more than your average entrepreneur, but of course very few employees will ever have the opportunity to get such a position.
Re:You can't earn a lot while working for others (Score:4, Interesting)
REALLY want to earn a lot of money, working for others won't make you rich
Tell that to the banks and the finance industry in general. You might not make it to billionaire but millionaire is easily achievable, all for risking other people's money with apparently almost zero risk to yourself even if you are the one responsible for messing up.
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The moral is very simple --- if you really want to be wealthy, stop being a worker, and start being an entrepreneur
Most people aren't entrepreneurs. To be a successful entrepreneur, your primary goal in life has to be making money. Most of us just want to earn enough to be comfortable and free to do things we actually enjoy.
You're either a natural born entrepreneur or you're not.
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That depends on your line of work. If you're a coder for a bank, then no.
But moving up to management levels in many companies, you'll do very, very well.
And there are some serious paycheques to be had if you're a senior accountant. A cousin of mine took off several years to raise her family, giving up her $200,000/yr salary because her husband made several times that at the same firm.
Of course, it depends on where you set the bar for being "rich". But you can potentially earn millions annually working for o
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Your world as described in your comment isn't freedom, it is fascism (i.e. I will tell you how to use your rights).
"Ultimate goal is to enjoy life without harassing other people all too much."
Well, you can start doing that tomorrow. You pretty much failed on that goal tonight. Perhaps tomorrow you won't be harassing others and telling them how to use their "freedom".
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It is perfectly acceptable to curtail other people's absolute freedom where it impinges on someone else's, e.g. you are not free to murder me.
Errr... not all employees are downtrodden (Score:5, Insightful)
You sound a bit unhinged.
Did it ever occur to you that some people don't mind being employees? I'm not sure how you equate "working for somebody else" with inevitable serfdom. I show up for work for reasonable hours under reasonable working conditions, I do my job, they pay me for it, I go home. Nobody took rights away from me; if I don't like the arrangement, I tell my boss it's over and I go elsewhere. No violence necessary or wished-for.
Did you read his whole post? (Score:2)
Did you actually read his whole post? I don't care if he would prefer not to employ people, although implying that anyone that would employ someone else for profit is pretty much Evil Capitalist Scum is a bit weird.
What I keyed off of was: " The only reason why I do not act violently against people like you is that I abhor violence even more than I abhor your ideals." The only thing stopping him from violently attacking perfectly normal employing business owners is disliking violence some small amount mor
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Chances are you'll need to wear a suit to work.
This has always puzzled me why some developers list this as a negative. What is wrong with wearing a suit? Every professional workplace has an expectation of a formal atire. What is wrong with requiring suits over the usual office shirts and pants?
Re: The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different (Score:2, Insightful)
Wearing a suit everyday is a pain in the ass. Are you daft?
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I like suits. Sounds like you need the trouser seam adjusted in yours, though.
Re:The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite simply, it's less comfortable to wear. Considering how much you spend at work, even minor differences in comfort can be very important and well worth the salary difference.
Re:The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different (Score:5, Insightful)
If you work in any field involving network infrastructure, software development, information services, or data management/warehousing and your salary is at all dependent upon your attire, I strongly suggest you inquire with competing firms. You may well find they're paying better and place fewer arbitrary burdens upon their personnel.
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Quite simply, it's less comfortable to wear. Considering how much you spend at work, even minor differences in comfort can be very important and well worth the salary difference.
If your suit isn't comfortable, buy a nicer suit. A good suit is extremely comfortable.
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Not if it's hot out.
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A good suit is as comfortable as anything else, only beaten by a pyjama or a kimono.
The only 'exception' I would agree with: it is rather warm when shorts and/or a t-shirt would be enough.
On the other hand wearing shorts in the US is even more front uppon.
Likely you never owned (or simply tried) a good suit?
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Re:The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different (Score:5, Insightful)
Every professional workplace has an expectation of a formal atire.
No, they don't. This is a statement made by someone about ready to REtire.
Most high-paying tech jobs today do not require a suit and many not even an office to go into. Often you can work at home in your pajamas, if you like.
Yes, really.
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Indeed. I do that routinely, as that is the most productive setting for me. Never had any customer complaints either, once they saw the first results.
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Often you can work at home in your pajamas, if you like.
That is entirely irrelevant for the majority of people who do have to go into an office dressed reasonably smartly each day. Just because you have a cool, highly paid job where you can sit around in PJs doesn't mean most people can.
It's just an inverted form of elitism.
Re:The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different (Score:5, Insightful)
One problem with it is that the bizarre notion that a suit is "professional" is a tool of social exclusion, and anyone wearing one where it's expected will support the notion, and hence help to exclude people who aren't interested in them or can't afford them.
Also simply just having to abandon my own personal culture and yield to a hateful culture where we judge people by arbitrary qualities of the clothing they wear is an awful feeling, and if I could do this willingly, I wouldn't be so good at demanding correctness elsewhere, and hence writing disciplined and secure code. You want to be able to be yourself at a place you'll be spending a significant proportion of your life. The suits game is wrong on multiple levels, and utterly rejecting it is part of my being.
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Ah! That is the first insightful reply and one I agree with.
Indeed, you are being judged by the clothes you wear. This is something I had to learn back in high school when I had to go for my first job interview. It is all about the first impression and regardless of what you know, it will be formed before you even speak. It is tragic that regardless of what you know, it is how you look like that makes the most difference :-(.
Alas, that is human nature and there is no changing that. At some point one has to
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That said ; it's also far harder for developers to actually communicate their rightness to other groups, like management and marketing, because they don't understand the language you're using when talking about it. Even if you break it down to the level where your primary school aged children could understand it, there will be people in positions of power that just won't grok what your project is about or why it's important.
At some point, you either have to finish the project just to justify that it should
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Very much this.
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I dont like suits, but I also disagree. A big reason to require suits is because you want your workforce looking professional. You want them looking professional because it makes a good impression on customers; it does this because it gives the appearance of having ones act together.
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Obviously that only works in countries where the customers are that retarded :) ... a suit in business? Nope, I only have two ... they are much to valuable/expensive to carry
I would bet the huge majourity of IT workers (regardless of software or hardware) simply wear something jeans like and a shirt/t-shirt.
If a customer would enter a development teams room and everyone had a suit on, the customer would rather be shocked than impressed.
But if the season is right I like to wear a Sacco together with my jeans
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Don't like it? Fine. You're not indispensable, there is a long queue of people desperate for a job. You need my money more than I need your "skills".
This is the attitude of a person who will only hire and only retain the very worst of employees who cannot find a job elsewhere. Congratulations on employing the bottom of the barrel.
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Now you know how the bottom of the barrel makes a living: by working for the bottom of the barrel. There is something like a Zen riddle somewhere hidden deep within this simple fact.
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So when the poor fail to cross an additional hurdle of saving for something which shouldn't be necessary whilst not having enough money to feed themselves properly, which the wealthy don't need to worry about, or simply refuse to go through such unpleasantness in order to obeise themselves in front of the systems which oppress them, you accuse them of lacking self-discipline, and use that as an excuse to deny opportunity from them and keep participating in their oppression.
A perfect example of why suit cult
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Any job interview I walk into with someone with such a self righteous attitude, I walk out.
Hiring is a two way street: management picks the employees they want, but employees would be smart to pick the team they want to be on.
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Bull.
Short term I may be forced to take a job that I don't want, but long term I'm looking for a place to work where I'm treated like a human being, and where I can enjoy working.
Life is too short to work like a slave.
And while it may be that you have some employees who can't get a better deal, you can bet high performers like myself won't work in your shop – at least not long term.
Re: The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different (Score:4, Insightful)
Well buddy you and any job you have can go fuck itself. My particular job requires an engineering degree - in itself requiring a high degree of literacy, numeracy and the discipline to study those subjects. It requires that I understand a wide range of complex technical subjects, that I can analyse things that have never been done before, can effectively and accurately devise ways to design, implement and test those things. I will work long hours for no extra reward in an area that frequently has hard to measure outcomes and progress projects which can take years to reach a prototype stage. If you're planning to hire me solely because I can shave and buy a suit then I have no desire to work for you. Oh, and if you want someone who does what I do and is good at it... well I'm afraid it is you who is in the queue, not me.
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(On the other hand, the tie was invented by croatian military riders as a replacement for buttons to close the shirt. To use a tie with a buttonned shirt is quite contrary to its original use case.)
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It's clear you've never been to Japan. Dudes ride to work on bikes in suits all the time. Of course, they aren't expensive tailored suits.
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Dude, "But it's commonplace in Japan" is an argument *against* something, not *for* something.
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In the Netherlands you'll see lots of Dutchies (in very expensive suits) riding bikes around.
It's not a big deal if your suit has been tailored correctly.
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The tie was invented at various places for various reasons. Your reason is the most unbelievable one, I ever have heard. Why/how should a tie help if you wear a shirt with no buttons? The shirt would still be open, besides at the neck.
One story about the tie is: it is used to cover the buttons of the shirt, contradicts your story.
The other is: british students used it to affront their professors, they symbolize penises worn around the neck ...
I often rode a bicycle in a suit, something is wrong, either with
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Every professional workplace has an expectation of a formal atire. What is wrong with requiring suits over the usual office shirts and pants?
I'm not opposed to wearing a well-tailored suit. I've worn many suits over the years, and I once wore a Navy uniform for a living. These facts notwithstanding, your view on this topic is plainly distorted. My professional workplace doesn't have this expectation, and our average employee salary is considerably higher than that of a great many companies with dress codes. Our expectations are that reasonable personal hygiene is attended to and that our employees bring brains and dedication to work every day. A
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The typical observation is that the more formalism (not only clothing), the less actual skill and insight is present. "Show" replaces "skill".
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While my personal observations in this context are overwhelmingly in agreement with yours, I'll add that there is a subtle difference between office cultures which display visceral disdain for formality and those which merely disregard it as being irrelevant to the core mission of the business. The former may be summarized as "damn the man, we're hip and trendy and full of venture capital, and can you please repeat the question" whereas the latter may be closer to "the attire of a particular group of people
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I certainly agree to your observation. The question is whether conformity is required to standards (whatever they may be) that have nothing to do with the skill and quality of work that an individual brings to the table.
I also noticed that people desperately wanting to be "hip" and "rebels" and "modern" and "informal" are often anything but and often also have rather low skills. These are basically using their "informality" as "formal attire", and fail just the same to focus on skill and capabilities instea
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Well, you are certainly right, but it goes both ways. ... but the right dress for the right occasion matters, and right means: well suiting, well worn and clean.
I'm an martial arts teacher and also a juror in examinations.
You often see people coming to an examination really badly dressed. Not only does that give them an immediate negative point by the jurors, regularly they are also the worst participants.
That does not neglect your point
I guess the next time I see one coming into an examination with a dirty
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I consider my workplace a professional workplace. In my group we're working on the Linux kernel, networking code and in my case bootloader code for some massive embedded processors (right next to me I have two 48-core 64-bit processors running in tandem (total 96 cores) with 40Gbps ports hooked up. Nobody in my group, from the manager on down wears a suit. If I wore a suit to any of the engineering jobs I've had since college a lot of questions would be raised. A number of people commented on the fact that
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I suspect we'd get along pretty well. Hit me up if you're ever in Dallas, TX.
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I'm working on some rather large scale parallel network operations, btw.
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Simple: It is higher effort and cost and uncomfortable, unless you are used to it. In most IT departments, you can get away very well with shirt and (black, non-worn) jeans even as a consultant.
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I have been to many professional workplaces. Almost none of them have an expectation of a suit -- golf shirt and non-jean slacks are about as formal as you get (for men), and you'll very likely get away with jeans.
Law firms, you'd need a suit if you're going to court, but don't need to wear it daily. Some finance/banking professionals, some government jobs. Some salespeople, depending on who they are selling too (with the proviso that they typically shouldn't wear anything their prospective customer woul
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How about cost? A suit costs more than jeans + t-shirt and you'll need a few of them. You still need to own jeans and t-shirts for your off days, so you're buying more clothes then before. Plus suits wear out easier. Torn jeans are trendy. Torn suit trousers are not.
On top of that you can't clean them yourself, you have to take them to a dry cleaner, which costs money. The shirts you can clean yourself but prepare to spend some time everyday ironing, and it won't look as nice as if you'd brought it in
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A good suit holds a lifetime.
And if there are issues, there are plenty of tricks how a professional tailor can repair it, or retailor it, if you gain or lose weight.
I guess if I count the jeans I used up the previous five years I could get another 1000Euro Armani suit (which includes a Jacket and likely a west).
On the other hand, if you really wanted to invest 1000 dollars or Euros for a suit, you rather go to tailor. You get something with twice the look and twice the quality for half the price from a pro
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They're expensive. They generally need dry-cleaning. Spilling stuff on them is expensive. They're typically less comfortable than some alternatives. They tend to be hotter in the summer than what I'd normally wear.
Either you have an unusually narrow definition of "workplace", or your statement is just factually incorrect.
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Every professional workplace has an expectation of a formal atire.
Would that be satisfied with me wearing a pocket protector? :-p
What is wrong with requiring suits over the usual office shirts and pants?
Again, if they are "usual", there can't be anything wrong with them, so what's the problem with wearing those?
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I found it funny at one job I had where they wanted me to where a suit every day to work... They were paying me $28,000 a year at the time and requiring me to crawl around on the floor at times to check network wiring or move around equipment... I'd need to use a dry cleaners daily to have some hope of keeping these suits clean. It took a lot of effort to explain this to someone and how dress slacks and a dress shirt with a tie may be somewhat better for my work 'uniform' than wearing a suit given some of t
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Because it's pointless. How does a necktie and buttoned down sleeves make anyone a better programmer or sysadmin?
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It puzzles me because it is quite petty (You wear one additional piece of clothing over the usual), this aversion is quite widespread among developers and from my interactions among several white-colar industries it is only in IT that it is present.
Hence I find it odd... Especially since they are willing to sacrifice money to get around this requirement.
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I took *TWO* COBOL classes in college. Anyone want to hire me?
COBOL: Why the hate? (Score:2)
There is certanly a lot of hate directed at COBOL. However, since if it is still being used, then it still has some capability that is not available in other solutions. Also looking at the wikipedia, the language keeps being updated (COBOL 2014 standard is out for example) and supports object-oriented methodology.
COBOL is one language that I haven't encountered. Perhaps it would be insightful if someone can explain why there is so much animosity towards this technology.
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However, since if it is still being used, then it still has some capability that is not available in other solutions.
No, no, no, no!
COBOL is still in use because because mid-to-large corporations spend many millions of dollars on systems that WORKED, and now it's far cheaper to keep them working, the same old way, than it is to do it all over again with modern equipment and languages.
This is called "installed base" and it's a particular problem for COBOL because that was one of the first business languages, and has one of the largest, large-corporation "installed bases".
COBOL has nothing to offer that newer langu
Re:COBOL: Why the hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in many cases they probably can't do it over. We're talking about major financial and operational programs that weren't designed so much as they evolved along with the business over the course of the last half-century (since the introduction of the IBM System/360). The specs and requirements, if they exist at all, are buried in the back of a warehouse the size of Warehouse 13 and have probably been turned into nests for the mutant rats. The source code in many cases doesn't match the binaries or doesn't exist at all thanks to errors in migrating data and mistakes in editing files. The running binaries may literally be the only authoritative statement of what rules the company's accounting follows. There's a reason every single IBM mainframe since the S/360 has been capable of emulating an S/360 down to the hardware level, after all.
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I think you are quite mistaken when you look at reliability, scalability and stability of the definition. These are all huge cost and risk factors. Of course, most "programmers" do not even understand what these terms mean.
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VB6 may have a similar status in a while. I refused to learn VB.NET because it would destroy my VB6 knowledge, because it's almost but not entirely completely different.
The things I can make VB6 do are both amazing and shameful..
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My guess it is mostly from people that find learning languages really, really hard and that try to get by with one (or sometimes two) languages, like Java and JavaScript. When these people are told "why not do COBOL?", they immediately freak out, as they are reminded that they are not really programmers, but 1-trick-ponies and actually have really no business producing software because they suck at it. And then they feel that COBOL is not something new and it is safe to lash out at it. Unfortunately, these
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I had a couple COBOL classes (Score:3)
One in high school in the late 80s, and one college course while in the military.
Of course, I may need to freshen that up a bit.
I took a COBOL class... (Score:2)
...many years ago. An extra $10,000 a year isn't enough to get me to program in that language again.
I wouldn't advise anyone to study COBOL unless they really needed the job. If you go that route you are going to be doing uninteresting (to me anyway) programming in a ghetto while other programmers of your generation are doing more interesting things. COBOL is a dead-end.
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Your reminding me of when I learned COBOL... using microfocus in the 90's... I've never programmed in it after learning it though... I do however like the ability to describe the specific parts of what are effectively strings (though I don't think they are ever referred to as such) when handling input and output. I miss the fine ability to output text in C or C++ where I need a lot more effort to create the precision COBOL has...
Thanks, but no thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)
I took COBOL -- late 90's.
The one job interview I went on where I could put that skill to use showed me why I *wouldn't* want such a job.
The issue wasn't the language per se, it was the fact that most companies still using COBOL are also trapped in chronically underfunded and undervalued IT departments, holding old machines and apps together with bailing wire and duct tape.
Re:Thanks, but no thanks. (Score:4, Funny)
I took COBOL, early 2000s. Best on my "promotion". Years later I still see it as "what I'll do to avoid homelessness and for no other reason".
The same as with Fortran (Score:2)
client: Do you have anybody who writes Fortran?
employer: Sorry, that is too old, we do not do anything with that.
client: But one of your employees (me) has on his linked in profile that he is a Fortran programmer
employer: he must have forgotten to update it, but we will have a look
client: please do.
And a month later I was wo
Average (Score:3)
students who took an elective COBOL class earned on average $10,000 more a year upon graduation than classmates who hadn't
Makes me think if this is median or mode average. Maybe there's a single expert who got some crazy $10,000,000/a mission critical deal. ;)
Correlation/causation? (Score:2)
For example, if I'm interested in making lots of money I'll go into financial software. A lot banks still use COBOL, so doing a course on that increases my options in this area. Even if I don't use it ever again, and don;t even go into banking, I'm still a lot more likely to work for a company that pays a lot
Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't care about what kind of job you get, just how much money you make, then:
a) You will make more money than someone who considers other factors in their choice of career.
b) You will take any courses which you're told will enhance your marketability, no matter how disgusting. Like COBOL.
Hence it's unsurprising that people who take COBOL make more money... but is it *because* they took COBOL? That's less clear. Correlation is not causation.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Could it not also be that people who want to really understand computer architecture better take obscure classes like COBOL, and being better programmers make more money?
Is it COBOL or the people? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things I think when I look at something like that is, the $10k difference is illustrating how much more people make that care enough about computer science/programming to take the time to explore many languages - not so much that they are all getting COBOL jobs, they are just more competent.
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I would consider COBOL to be computer science history. It may not be too useful in itself, but it shows where we came from and how things used to be. Someone willing to take that kind of class seems more dedicated to the realm of CS than someone just trying to get their MSCE or certificate in the latest fad.
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After reading the article, the $10k difference they are using was between those who took the COBOL class and ALL Business Computer Information Systems students. That degree is more of an IT degree than a software development related degree (at this school). It is a very bad comparison.
I would be more interested in how those students who took COBOL compared to the university's Computer Science and Engineering students.
Supply IS GREATER THAN Demand (Score:2)
Shocker. Economics 101. As the the pool of COBOL programmers is reduced the shops still needing them are going to have to pay more.
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I don't think those kids are writing COBOL (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think those kids go out into the wide, wide, world to program COBOL. I suspect that the subset of CS majors that care enough about real-world jobs are the sort to take a COBOL class, just in case it comes in handy. You'd probably also see that these students are more likely to pursue computer-related summer and in-school part-time jobs, more likely to participate in open-source projects etc.
I know that when I was looking for jobs, I had a whole stack of job offers, despite a middling GPA. Some of the other students in my dept. struggled to find a job, despite better grades. The difference? Two computer-related summer jobs, four different tech-related work-study jobs, and a LOT of extra-curricular study in IT. If my school had a COBOL course, I probably would have taken it. (I did take a SQL course, which wasn't even offered by the CS dept.; it was in the business school, along with the other IT (vs. CS) classes.)
Required languages to know (Score:2)
Yes, but No. NO. **NO!** (Score:2)
These days, I write perl. Which is closer to C than it is to Cobol. Cobol, if anything, is closer to banging your head against a brick wall - it feels *so good* when you stop.
COBOL is fun!! (Score:2)
Took we had to take it in CS back in the early 90s. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Now, would I want to program in it for the rest of my life? Probably not. :D
Ada not a bad option (Score:2)
Best of All = Cobol 2 Javascript (Score:2)
1) Learn javascript
2) Learn cobol
3) Use Cobolscript [github.com]
4) Profit !
Don't Do it! - no growth, career limiting move. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, sounds great. Make 10K more out of the gate. And if you're finding it tough to land a job right now, what a DEAL this is! You're employed! You're really needed since the number of COBOL programmers to support legacy systems are dying off (figuratively and literally).
There's the catch. They've got you. You don't know it, but they know it.
Next year, your fellow grads who got jobs are learning TONS of new things, other skills. Team building, real life design. Team leadership. They're getting mentored perhaps. They'll make their way up to intermediate, then senior developers. Maybe into architecture.
But you're still slogging through COBOL code. Supporting legacy systems.
And they can't afford to lose you, so your company (A Bank most likely - not the fastest moving group in the world (and I know since I've worked for three)). So you're still COBOL programming. But, y'know, thanks for the effort. Here's a 2K bonus.
Uour friends are now 2 years along in their careers, they're moving to new jobs, making 10-20K more since they can show job experience, skills experience, and real-life development qualities.
You're even or a bit behind, pay-wise. But they're going places. You're about to stand still, career-wise.
In a year they shoot past you, and that's that. You're standing still. Cost-of-living increases if you're lucky. But hey! We at the bank really appreciate it. So here's a nice mouse pad, and the latest patch release for COBOL on the Z-Frame.
So, no movement here. What to do? I know!! Other companies need COBOL programmers. I'll play the field and see who will throw me more money.
Great. You make a bit more money. Doing EXACTLY the same thing, somewhere else, with little if any career growth. It's possible you will always have a job, since COBOL is entrenched, and not going anywhere. But that's all you'll ever do. That and cut 1650 reels with your teeth.
Don't Do it. It's a trap.
Re: (Score:2)
Ruby, as an untyped language, is incredibly slow and thus should not be used for large scale systems
Node.js encourages unmaintainable code because of "callback hell" and prototype inheritance is an abomination
Java is way too verbose to be useful, and the JVMs gc sucks
Python is a fractured environment and s
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't matter. There's still a selection bias.
Suppose that students with an interest in programming languages (as an end, not just as a means) on average go on to be more successful software engineers. These students are more likely to take the COBOL course (assuming the alternative courses are on topics other than programming languages).
Even if the course teaches them literally nothing, we still expect the students who opted to take the course, to do better than average.
Re: (Score:2)
Good hypothesis.
Re: (Score:2)
This is correct. From what I'm seeing in the summary at least, there's a very clear selection bias.
This depends somewhat on what is meant by 'elective'. If it means extra-curricular, there's an obvious selection bias on proactiveness. If it instead means you get to choose from this set of courses, then there's still be a selection-bias (perhaps students with an interest in programming languages as an end rather than just a means, are on average more successful as software engineers).
Re:Weeding Out (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a typical thing: The "modern" solutions are all bells and whistles, but are missing basic things or do them wrong. More often than not, this is because they were designed by people that saw some real or perceived shortcomings in older tech, but completely missed its strengths and failed to reproduce them.
Example: Ever tried to do massive multi-threading in Java? That fails miserably and the byte-code interpreter does nothing but task-switching very soon. In an "enterprise" setting, these things are toys when the back-end is considered.
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Likewise, mine expected you to know C++ to understand OOP.
Never had a C or C++ course before or after.