Watsonx: IBM's code assistant for turning COBOL into Java

1. buro9 ◴[03 Dec 23 18:12 UTC] No.38509304[source]▶

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/cobol-programmer-salary...

If it's so valuable to the industry that they have good people who know it, that should surely be reflected in the salary / comp for roles... And if that were high, people would learn it, but it's not high, it's arguably worse than just learning a little JavaScript

replies(2): >>38509917 #>>38513921 #

2. halfdan ◴[03 Dec 23 19:26 UTC] No.38509917[source]▶

>>38509304 (TP) #

You’re looking at salaries for COBOL programmers in the UK which is a small subset of an already small market.

replies(1): >>38509985 #

3. IshKebab ◴[03 Dec 23 19:34 UTC] No.38509985[source]▶

>>38509917 #

I've checked in America before and came to the same conclusion. There's an idea that COBOL programming pays vastly more than other languages, but it's just a myth. It might pay a little more, but more like 20% more. Certainly not enough to warrant a COBOL career.

And I'm sure some consultants can earn vast sums fixing old COBOL code, but that's just because they're consultants. Consultants always earn vast sums.

replies(1): >>38512258 #

4. cowsandmilk ◴[04 Dec 23 00:21 UTC] No.38512258{3}[source]▶

>>38509985 #

> Certainly not enough to warrant a COBOL career.

I don't understand why people are claiming this sets your career to only ever write COBOL. I know plenty of people who started their careers with perl, but have been Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, or Rust programmers at different points as their careers progressed.

Someone overseeing a project migrating a COBOL monolith over time to a set of decoupled services in some other language would easily have a strong story for the timeless need of improving application architecture.

5. aitchnyu ◴[04 Dec 23 05:07 UTC] No.38513921[source]▶

>>38509304 (TP) #

Indian companies take fresh graduates and train them into mainframe devs. I was a little sceptical about shrinking pool of highly paid people.