[Info-vax] And another one bites the dust....

[Dan Cross]

In article <j7844nFnlqeU1 at mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 2/17/22 17:15, Dan Cross wrote:
>> True, but kids grow up dreaming about being astronauts.
>> I don't know anyone who yearns to be a COBOL programmer.
>
>I still do.... :-)

Ha!  I meant to write, "I don't know any kids...", but perhaps
I should just cite you as the exception to the rule.  :-)

>> 
>> The issue isn't that you can't train people to do it; it's
>> that almost no one _wants_ to be trained to do it.
>
>No, that's not quite accurate.  It's because the people who should
>be teaching them COBOL refuse to for reasons with no basis in fact.

Who are those people?  University professors?  What are their
reasons and, more importantly, why aren't those reasons factual?

>> Then there's the matter of training materials, educational
>> venues, etc.  Universities used to teach COBOL.  
>
>And they are the root of the problem.

This is turning into a much deeper discussion.  My opinion is
that universities should not exist solely to provide vocational
training.  At this point, teaching COBOL is entirely vocational.

>>                                                 High
>> quality textbooks were produced.  
>
>Well, can't say I agree with that.  The textbook business is mostly
>snake oil.  One of the most popular COBOL textbooks was written by
>a pair of professional textbook writers, not by practitioners of the
>art.  When I took COBOL in school I bought two additional books to
>accompany the chosen textbook.  It contributed greatly to how well
>I learned the subject.

Who wrote those books?  At any rate, perhaps I should have said
that there have been high quality texts on COBOL, regardless of
whether those texts fit a prescribed textbook format.

>
>>                                  These days, not so much.
>> Most training materials will be second hand books describing
>> old version of the language, or vendor-supplied materials
>> of varying levels of quality and erudition.
>
>There are very good books on COBOL available today.  And they
>cover the language as is currently in use.  (That means the
>EVALUATE verb rather than 20 level deep IF-THEN-ELSE peices.)
>They also cover Database access from COBOL as well as the
>old fashioned flat file stuff.  I have even considered writing
>a COBOL text myself targeted at the use of OpenSource tools.

Go for it!  That would be a useful addition to the canon.

>> And who does the training?  I guess the vendors provide
>> courses, or its OJT'ed?
>
>Right now probably the vendor.  GDIT, who has a very large
>COBOL IS supporting the DOD used to advertise for interns.
>Wanted first or second year students who had taken the
>usual two course intro to programming and said they would
>provide the COBOL training.
>
>But that is a very limited solution to the problem.  Universities
>have abdicated their responsibility to prepare students for their
>future careers.  I think it is time to get the Tech Schools
>involved.  Many of them are now degree granting institutions
>(locally you can get degrees in things like diesel mechanic!)
>and have taught low level CIS classes already.  This could be
>a boon for them.

I suppose there's a much larger debate to be had about the role
of universities in professional computing.  I wouldn't say that
they have "abdicated their responsibility to prepare students
for their future careers", though; certainly not by abandoning
COBOL in their curricula.

In my view, universities exist to for two things: education and
research.  The educational mission usually means imparting the
basics and equipping students with the tools necessary to absorb
other information.  This naturally means learning things that
are mostly agnostic of any particular technology; in CS, that's
data structures and algorithms, basic coding skills, highlights
of major topics in the field, etc.  Particular programming
languages are not among them.

The research side should be pushing the limits of the field ever
outward.  If there's any interesting research to do on COBOL, I
imagine it would be some semantic analysis, but mostly automatic
conversion to other languages.

>>> And that is true for just about anything on the planet.  Yes, we train for
>>> required jobs.  But the Cobol (and Basic,Fortran, (hock, spit, gag) C, and
>>> others will define the needs, based upon the entities with those needs.
>> 
>> Well, good luck finding them.
>> 
>>> I have my doubts about the training defining the needs.
>> 
>> It's not a, "mommy, where do COBOL programmers come from?"
>> question.
>
>True.  the real question that people in the industry should be
>asking is just why Universities refuse to meet this particular
>need.

Probably because the need appears less pressing than reality
might indicate, but again, universities aren't vocational
training schools; there's a lot of COBOL out there, but again,
how much of that is copy-pasta because people are scared of
modifying working code?  Most of the COBOL work has been
outsourced, and you can't force students to want to learn COBOL.
As a fraction of overall computing, the demand for COBOL
programmers, at least in the United States, is small.

Note that this isn't meant as an elitist/snob thing, rather just
that the mission is different.  I suspect the soluton here is to
provide this sort of training via vocational programs; hand in
hand with that, societies really ought to treat those things
with more respect.

>It's not rocket science and most Universities that have
>CS programs usually have CIS program as well.   Why do they
>refuse to meet this need?

I would argue that CIS isn't strictly appropriate for a
university, unless it's more of an inter-disciplinary research
center, possibly offering a few survey courses.

	- Dan C.