COBOL - The New Latin

 Another inconvenient truth

by Lou Washington, Cincom’s Master of MIPS

I can well remember a day during my junior high school years when we were given an opportunity to spend a few minutes with our “Guidance Counselor” to discuss our ambitions for the future.  The purpose of these sessions was to get us thinking about career choices and that, in turn, was supposed to drive our choices in the area of elective course selection.

The overall lesson here was that a fun career in the future meant taking a lot of courses now that you ordinarily would not otherwise even consider taking.

Student: I wanna fly jets! 

Counselor: You gotta know trig.

Student: I wanna be a movie star!

Counselor: You gotta study English literature.

Student: I wanna be a doctor!

Counselor: You gotta know biology and chemistry.

Lawyers, Latin and Lou 

“Well Lou, what do you want to be?” the guy asks. In my mind, I finished the sentence, “...  when you grow up?”   After we ruled out college student as a permanent career, I stated my next choice,  “Sir, I want to be a lawyer!” Bingo, this pleased him; this gave him something to go on.

He stared at me, looked over my transcript, stared into space contemplating my choice.  Then his wisdom poured forth, “Well, Lou, you know you will need a good foundation in Latin if you want to study law.”  At the time, I guess I didn’t realize that the Constitution of the United States of America, the Bill of Rights and the Revised Statutes of the State of Missouri were all readily available in English.

So, a year later, I found myself in Ms. Cauthorn’s sixth-period Latin class.  Ms. Cauthorn was well qualified to teach Latin, I think it was her native tongue.  The rumor was she might have even dated Julius Caesar during her high school days.

Almost everyone I spoke to about my curriculum for that year had the same reaction.  They all asked why I would want to study Latin; it was, after all, a dead language.

You know where I’m going with this.

COBOL Cobbled?

People are saying the same thing about COBOL.  Don’t waste your time learning COBOL.  If they put you into a COBOL project, your career will be over. 

COBOL is for geezers.

You Talking to Me?

No one uses COBOL, it’s a  ... dead language.

Let’s put a couple of things to rest right now.

First, the status of Latin and COBOL are quite similar.  Neither is really dead, both are deeply ingrained, intertwined and embedded in our contemporary world.  The former in many of our written and spoken languages and the latter is the underpinning of much of the world’s existing data systems.

If you ignore Latin, you risk losing the ability to understand the derivation, and hence a full understanding, of many words in many modern languages.  If you ignore COBOL, you run the risk of failing to understand how your enterprise actually works. It is impossible to fully understand the processes within your organization without understanding the systems that support them.  Grace Hopper didn’t just invent a programming language; she invented the concept of business rules.

A “180” That has nine zeroes in it

Gartner Group has estimated that there are 180 billion lines of COBOL code in use around the world.  That’s 180 followed by nine zeros.  If you need help visualizing that number, think of it this way.  There are a little over 31.5 million seconds per year.  If you could read 5,708 lines of COBOL per second, you would require an entire year, non-stop, to read all 180 billion lines of code.

Is it still a bit too abstract to visualize?

Imagine that you printed out all of the COBOL code on your handy laser printer.  You will want to be able to read it, so, let’s say you get 50 lines per page in landscape mode.  Copy paper comes in 2” reams with 500 sheets per ream in our operation.  That figures out to a 227-mile tall printout.  Okay, so you print on both sides of the paper, let’s say it’s 113 miles tall.

We’ll why don’t we just convert it all to something new?  Good idea.  Gartner estimated in 2003, there were 90,000 COBOL programmers in the US.  These guys are all looking for something to do, so let’s have them handle the conversion.

Let’s see, 180 billion lines of code and 90,000 programmers works out to about two million lines per programmer. Surely a decent COBOL programmer can translate 20 lines per hour.  At that rate, each programmer will only require about 100,000 hours to complete the conversion.  That works out to about 13,300 workdays.  If we figure 250 workdays per year, these guys should be done in about 53 years.

An Inconvenient Truth (About COBOL that is)

Oh, I forgot to mention, the use of COBOL is growing ... by about a billion lines per year.  And, those 90,000 COBOL programmers?  They are all out buying fishing boats, Winnebagos and Hawaiian Luau shirts.

Got any more ideas?  COBOL isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

COBOL Cool Again?

There is only one reasonable course of action.

COBOL must be embraced, it must be taught and it must become cool again.  Rather than running way from COBOL, we need to look for ways to integrate it more fully into our new development processes.

Our institutions must teach the use of COBOL as a basic requirement in the IT curricula.  It does not matter how much JAVA you know, it does not matter if you can web-enable your kid’s Etch-a-Sketch in your sleep.

It will all be for nothing if the legacy systems in use in your enterprise aren’t effectively tied into the snazzy new systems you want to deploy.  If these two worlds don’t play well together, your enterprise will be imperiled.

I can’t imagine why anyone interested in programming would not jump into this area like a big wet dog jumping on a white couch.  Companies will be begging for COBOL-literate people for years to come and based on current trends, there will be fewer and fewer people with this expertise.  That means the price per head will be going up.

Got Geezer Code?

Meanwhile, how do companies free up the people to handle this body of information?  Start looking at alternative programming strategies.  Let’s say you have a staff of 50 programmers.  You are losing your COBOL brain trust and no one wants to work on geezer code.

First … Know Thyself

Going outside is no good because your business is complex, and knowledge of the systems requires knowledge of the business itself.  Here’s the plan for redeploying your human assets to maximize their effectiveness.

First, you take 25% of your programmers and start them on learning COBOL.  This may be done outside your corporation; it may be done with private contractors teaching onsite.  However you go, one out of four of your programmers will be knowledgeable in COBOL in six months.

Next, you take another 25% and you get them proficient in one of the newer languages. For instance, MANTIS^â from Cincom (yes this is a plug for my company … so what?) will offer you huge increases in productivity.  Within a single week, your people will be productive MANTIS programmers turning out apps 90% faster than their COBOL counterparts.

Then … Get Happy

At the conclusion of six months, you make whatever adjustments you need to make as far as getting people into their “happy” zone.  Now you have a crew of programmers that are well able to take on all of your systems, support all of your code and create new apps as needed with assurance that they are properly interfaced with your legacy systems.

Your future is secure!

About Lou Washington

Birthplace: Columbia, Missouri

High School: Hickman (home of the mighty Kewpies!!) Other famous Hickman alumni include Sam Walton and Ken Lay

Military: The US Navy

College: Graduated in 1975 from the University of Missouri (home of the mighty Tigers!!). Other famous Mizzou alumni include not only Walton and Lay but also Brad Pitt and Sheryl Crow.

Professional Life: I started my career in information management from the somewhat misunderstood field of Records Management. Following four years of working for the University of Missouri System's Office of Records Management, I joined Tab Products Co. in 1980. Shortly thereafter, I became interested in the software business, PCs and how those systems would shape the enterprise of the future. We were transferred to Tab's then corporate HQ in Palo Alto, CA. I was the first Product Manager for Tab's Tracker systems software products that utilized a PC-based bar-coding system to track the movements of everything from files to capital assets. I believe it was the earliest example of workflow automation available on the market. I was also peripherally involved in Tab's Laser Optics division, which brought to market one of the earliest business systems employing CD-ROM and WORM technology as an information storage media.

In 1990, I returned to Cincinnati and joined Cincom Systems where I began to learn about and work with mainframe-oriented products and systems. In those days, there was a real "split" between the mainframe forces and the desktop proponents. I always found this to be amusing since both had so many positive things to offer an enterprise. I could never understand why anyone would offer one at the exclusion of the other.

My present role at Cincom involves a number of things including product security, pricing, finance packaging and industry research.

My wife, Barbara, and I reside in Park Hills, KY. I am a member of Blessed Sacrament Church and I am active in a local car club, Cincinnati Cruisers. We are a group of PT Cruiser owners who enjoy tricking out our cruisers and driving around annoying people who have to drive boring cars. I am the Webmaster for the Cruisers and I invite everyone to visit www.cincyptcruisers.com and check out our awesome rides! Barbara and I both enjoy photography, travel and our two four-legged canine children, Chloe and Cookie.

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