Home » Archived » COBOL » What is the better programming language to learn, COBOL or Java?
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| Re: What is the better programming language to learn, COBOL or Java? [message #906119 is a reply to message #860382] |
Fri, 31 August 2012 16:52   |
 Bill Killen
Messages: 1
Registered: August 2012 |
Junior Member |
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I will take a different tack from the other poster. you will want to learn Java, as it is very pervasive and the most popular development language "today". However, if you just choose Java, you will be just like everyone else and there are plenty of java developers in the market today already.
COBOL, on the other hand, is interesting. It is 50 years old, well defined and over 1 million lines of code are written DAILY in COBOL. Also the majority of COBOL has never been deployed on a mainframe (80% or some such number). This is all on Unix-type hardware, and working its way into the cloud as we speak.
Who cares? Well, COBOL has been historically managed and developed by "Baby Boomers", right? When you go to a meeting and talk about COBOL, everyone in the room is grey and prepared for retirement. Who is going to manage all this stuff that they wrote the last several decades? YOU are!
COBOL is in a place of change right now. Companies are making it easier for us younger folks to develop COBOL with IDE frameworks that we already use, such as Eclipse. COBOL is running in Java VM's now; Check out Micro Focus "Visual COBOL" which takes this to Eclipse and Visual Studio. Companies are building composite applications and leveraging existing frameworks and objects to do new things.
Companies are taking it off the mainframe in some places, they are enabling it to be accessed by newer technologies and running COBOL on Android and other small footprint devices.
I am not in the COBOL business, but my employer is.
There will always be work managing "legacy" systems and making them relevant or available to newer technologies. One of my military customers said it best "Legacy means that it works." If you can help companies leverage what they built without full replacement (whenever feasible) , there is significant value and cost savings to be had in doing so.
Happy Schooling!
bk
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| Re: What is the better programming language to learn, COBOL or Java? [message #1439210 is a reply to message #860382] |
Tue, 07 October 2014 00:54 |
Pete U
Messages: 1
Registered: October 2014 |
Junior Member |
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Its an old post and the decision has been made by now but its worth answering for others in a dilemma now:
To start with, I'm unsure why you cannot study both either at the same time, or in successive courses...but leaving that aside:
You really have to take in where you see your career going. You might as well ask which is a better language to learn of French or Japanese? Each have very distinct features, design models and uses.
COBOL definitely shouldn't be discounted just because its old, since it still is heavily used behind the scenes in long established corporations with big time money to pay big time for programmers with the right (and especially unique skill set). These days it is often integrated for use with more modern object-oriented languages. Tools like Visual COBOL make it easy. But has been stated above, it most useful only for certain tasks, namely heavy number crunching and bulk processing. There IS still new development in COBOL however. It is not just for maintaining legacy systems.
Which brings us to the next point. If you have already studying an object-oriented language like C++ and are familiar with the concepts, you might be better off taking a course in COBOL, to get a more well-rounded view of programming. Highly valued in the IT world, are not only rarely found computing skills, but those who have a high level understanding of multiple technologies (and in any programming course you will only be getting a high level understanding of the language), especially between those of a high conceptual difference.
Being a programmer is a constant journey of self-education, and if you have studied other object-oriented programming languages you will probably be able to pick up Java later, both as self-study and some hands-on experience. Studying COBOL is one of those places where the opportunity to get that training will lie largely in academic experience. Any of those COBOL jobs that are hiring you for extra money are expecting you to understand it well, and there are fewer opportunities for apprenticeship.
Of course there is the argument of Java being used so widely, with so many applications. If one of those applications is where you are sure you want to be working and you haven't had any prior object-oriented programming. There are certainly many jobs advertised, and it is a more versatile language. Keep in mind that knowing Java at an academic level doesn't make you in any way special from any other of the millions of other Java programmers so be prepared to put in the hard yards to stand out among the crowd. You won't just walk into a job with 300 applicants, just because you have studied Java.
My own experience, both academic and practical as a developer over the last 20 years, has put me in touch with learning languages covering everything from machine code to Artificial intelligence, including COBOL and Java amongst them. Even though I have had little experience in practically applying most of them directly, I value understanding the concepts each specialised in, not only to pick the right task for the job, but also how those concepts may be efficiently implemented in other ways.
I don't recommend any programmer only learn one type of language, even if they only intend to actually code in one. A broad knowledge base will always help you think outside the box (or object).
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