COBOL Developers are Dying Away! If not Humans, AI is here to Help

Exploring a new AI-powered tool in development from startup Phase Change Software, called COBOL Colleague

COBOL is one of the programming languages that folks might have a particular issue with. After all, COBOL is 60 years old and famous for its use on mainframes. And when was the last time you saw a mainframe in an office? But COBOL remains in use, even if its usage has dropped radically. For example, it's still in use at many federal agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Veterans Affairs (as of 2016). The Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Hiring Tracking Systems, which as of three years ago were still running on a 2008 IBM z10 mainframe, are reportedly COBOL-based.

And it's not just the federal government: financial institutions refuse to give up their legacy systems, at least some of which run on COBOL. Banks refuse to overhaul these systems, and as long as they do, there's a need out there for COBOL programmers. In 2018, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Citi had at least two-dozen job openings that listed COBOL, according to eFinancialCareers.

Given the widespread refusal to abandon legacy systems and the undead programming languages that go with them, it seems like pockets of COBOL will persist for some time—putting pressure on banks and federal agencies to find developers who actually know the language. That's good for these highly specialized technologists, who can probably name their price when it comes to salaries and other benefits.

Artificial intelligence for COBOL
A new AI-powered tool in development from startup Phase Change Software, called COBOL Colleague, could potentially be a solution to the challenge. Steve Brothers, president at Phase Change Software, commented that COBOL isn't going away anytime soon. And while it is hard to find COBOL developers, that's not the real problem, he told VentureBeat.

"The real underlying problem is the knowledge of what the applications do because to change code effectively, you need to understand what the code does," he said. Simply having the ability to make code changes isn't enough, he added. What is needed is knowledge about code, which is an issue across many programming languages, though it is an acute problem for COBOL.

What is COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language)?
COBOL an acronym for Common Business Oriented Language is a computer programming language, which was designed for business use. COBOL was procedural in the beginning, but since 2002, COBOL became object-oriented. COBOL was developed by the Conference of Data System Languages (CODASYL).

COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in applications that are based on mainframe computers like transaction processing jobs. But nowadays, due to the retirement of experienced COBOL programmers, new programmers are shifting to different platforms, which are written in modern languages.

Why COBOL is a good option for developers:
Cobol Programmers mainly work for corporate businesses, since about 80% of business apps run on COBOL. There is a growing corporate need for skilled programmers to support and maintain critical COBOL systems. These programmers in the US commonly hold degrees in Computer Science, Computer Systems Security, and Management Information Systems. COBOL-related jobs don't demand a lot of specialized education, with 83.8 percent of the jobs asking for a bachelor's degree.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Cobol Programmer. There are certain skills that many Cobol Programmers have to accomplish their responsibilities. No COBOL-related job wants applicants to only know COBOL. Here are some of the top skills that crop up alongside COBOL in these job postings. These are COBOL, JCL, SQL, CICS, Java, Software Development, VSAM, Oracle, and Project Management.

Micro Focus, a company that writes plenty of COBOL code, sponsored a survey run by Vanson Bourne. To meet the need for more modern COBOL developers, Micro Focus created a free academic program to help educators teach this valuable skill and equip students to learn the ins and outs of COBOL within the familiar surroundings of a modern IDE such as Visual Studio or Eclipse.

Micro Focus has more than 40 years of COBOL experience, servicing more than 15,000 customers and over a million licensed users with its technology. The Micro Focus COBOL Academic program currently supports over 400 global academic partners with a focus on creating greater engagement between educators, students, and the business community.

The COBOL language running today is very different from the one programmer encoded in punch cards. Many popular platforms don't do a good job of ensuring that code continues to run longer than a few years. The COBOL community is devoted to avoiding this kind of problem. Right now, there are more active lines of application code written in COBOL than in any other programming language. The average Cobol Programmer in the United States earns a yearly salary of $85,000. In India, it's ₹49,761 per month.