I believe the true Grandmothers of COBOL would be Jean Sammet and Gertrude Tierney. However, that's a nitpicky detail.
While the idea of Modern Open Source COBOL is marvelous, it's probably 15 years too late. After Y2K, the descent of COBOL resumed. I don't foresee that trajectory ever changing.
I did COBOL for 24 years, up until almost 18 months ago when I made a successful transition into .NET development. Recently I made the transition into Data Management as a SQL Server Data Warehouse DBA. Short of someone offering me a hugely lucrative gig in COBOL, I don't foresee ever going back for either a contract or a perm gig. The end is coming for COBOL, but the death of a language occurs slowly over many years. Old programming languages never die. They just fade away.
For perverse entertainment, I sometimes answer COBOL questions on Stackoverflow. Yes, it's true, people really do ask COBOL questions on SO. I've done it for a sufficiently long time that I don't even need a compiler in front of me to check my code, which is scary in and of itself.
While the idea of a COBOL Renaissance would be wonderful, it just ain't gonna happen.
I believe the true Grandmothers of COBOL would be Jean Sammet and Gertrude Tierney. However, that's a nitpicky detail.
While the idea of Modern Open Source COBOL is marvelous, it's probably 15 years too late. After Y2K, the descent of COBOL resumed. I don't foresee that trajectory ever changing.
I did COBOL for 24 years, up until almost 18 months ago when I made a successful transition into .NET development. Recently I made the transition into Data Management as a SQL Server Data Warehouse DBA. Short of someone offering me a hugely lucrative gig in COBOL, I don't foresee ever going back for either a contract or a perm gig. The end is coming for COBOL, but the death of a language occurs slowly over many years. Old programming languages never die. They just fade away.
For perverse entertainment, I sometimes answer COBOL questions on Stackoverflow. Yes, it's true, people really do ask COBOL questions on SO. I've done it for a sufficiently long time that I don't even need a compiler in front of me to check my code, which is scary in and of itself.
While the idea of a COBOL Renaissance would be wonderful, it just ain't gonna happen.