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

234 points _false | 1 comments | 18 Jul 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.22s | 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. kqr ◴[18 Jul 25 17:57 UTC] No.44607851[source]▶
Accounting is a huge part of it. Sometimes claims are not fully resolved for decades, and the books for that policy hypothetically have to be kept open for as long. This must be kept correct, but is not computationally heavy.

Computing total exposures and possible loss distributions are things which can be more computationally heavy. It includes grouping together similar policies which is multiplicative in complexity.