A job in programming language COBOL conjures up images of thin ties, white shirts, spinning tape drives, and all of the glory and pain of the mainframe era. COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language. It is a high-level programming language for business applications. It was the first popular language designed to be operating system-agnostic. It was similar to English, which is widely used to develop business-oriented applications in the commercial data processing.
COBOL was merely eclipsed by the explosive growth of the other languages and technologies. This only makes sense because the language first appeared in 1959 and it was one of the dominant ways to code in the 1960s. COBOL didn't fade away, though. Recently, the program COBOL helped the state deal with a 1,600-percent increase in unemployment. Specializing in COBOL could translate into solid compensation, even before the COVID-19 crisis. Other languages for other roles grabbed the spotlight, riding the technology boom as computers proliferated.
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 programmers 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.
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