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Ask HN: Any active COBOL devs here? What are you working on?

234 points _false | 2 comments | 18 Jul 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

COBOL legacy systems in finance and government are somewhat of a meme. However, I've never actually met a single person who's day job is to maintain one. I'd be curious to learn what systems are you working on?
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zeeframe ◴[18 Jul 25 13:45 UTC] No.44604586[source]▶
I’m not a COBOL dev but I work with mainframes(z/OS). Most COBOL applications I’ve seen have been banking and insurance related with few exceptions. Most of them either run as a series of batch jobs or via transaction managers like IMS and CICS. Backends are usually sequential files(we call them datasets),DB2,VSAM(Virtual Storage Access Method) or DL/1(hierarchical DB that’s part of IMS). Quite a few places I’ve seen have run IBM MQ as well.

If changes are made to these systems it’s often due to changes in regulation or driven by changes in the business(new financial products being offered etc.

Off-topic: I’ve seen quite a few mainframe related posts on HN fly by over the years. I’ve been meaning to create an account and participate but I’ve only gotten around to it just now.

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gosub100 ◴[18 Jul 25 17:28 UTC] No.44607492[source]▶
What is the primary computational task for insurance? Is it computing actuarial tables? Or accounting for the premiums/claims? Or something else? I can excuse banking for not switching off of COBOL but I fail to see how insurance uses it to any significant degree.
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1. sethhochberg ◴[18 Jul 25 17:46 UTC] No.44607713[source]▶
Some less-common varieties of life insurance start to look a whole lot like investment products and are (sometimes controversially) sold as such for people in very specific financial situations - think like cash value and death benefit value that vary over time based on asset performance. A legacy insurer selling Variable Universal Life or similar policies would have some financial calculation needs.
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2. janstice ◴[19 Jul 25 00:12 UTC] No.44611268[source]▶
And I guess if there’s a whole-of-life policy sold in 1962 that hasn’t been terminated - I guess there’s a lot of grandfathered rules that are just easier to keep in their original systems.