Early 2025 will mark 45 years of my IBM mainframe-centric career that began as a COBOL applications programmer. As a language, COBOL differs from the terse, mathematical programming languages and Assembler languages.
COBOL is perfect for people who don’t have a degree in physics or engineering and were never good at math. I’m one of those people, and my degree is in Biology. Although it’s a STEM discipline, I’ve worked with fellow COBOL programmers whose degrees were in Music, English, Business, Education and other majors. Some had no college degrees at all.
COBOL was designed for use by “the masses” rather than brilliant computer technologists.
Especially when beginning my career, lots of applications needed to be written, but there weren’t many Computer Science graduates out there to write code. The Systems Programmers were often intensely focused on work requiring Assembler language skills.
COBOL was designed for use by “the masses” rather than brilliant computer technologists. That was Grace Hopper’s reason for creating COBOL. I’m sure there are countless examples of people like me who wouldn’t have been able to start their white-collar careers had it not been for COBOL. Grace Hopper was nicknamed “Amazing Grace,” but I’ll name her “Saving Grace.”
There are countless examples of people like me who wouldn’t have been able to start their white-collar careers had it not been for COBOL.
As I near the end of my career, I encourage newcomers to think of an entry-level COBOL programming job as a springboard to other jobs. Mine led me to a start in the software vendor business, then mainframe IT consulting and software sales to large organizations.
Without a doubt, my programming background helped me get a sales-related technical job with an independent software vendor, and it saved me several times when I transitioned to hyper-competitive software sales.
Great insight! And, as a music major in my undergraduate degree, I have similar feelings about COBOL. But, as you probably know by now, Grace Hopper did not create COBOL but rather, along with others, put the ideas for a new language and its creation in motion by participating in the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL), a consortium that eventually developed the language.
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