Cobol, the general business-oriented language that originated in 1959, maybe considered out-of-date, but it’s still widely used, and hiring developers with the proper Cobol skills will soon be pivotal to their selection.

Although easy to learn, Cobol most often is excluded in the computer science curriculum.  That’s largely due to Cobols’ failure to make the current top 10-list of popular languages. In its day, the program was extremely successful, as can be seen in its continued use.

Cobol meets all three parameters of a successful software system: efficiency, ability, and adaptivity of code. Primarily used in finance, business, corporate, and government administrative systems, When deployed on mainframe computers, Cobol is essential to processing numbers and data about users and customers in manufacturing, banking, and insurance. In data processing, and information gathering, the demand for Cobol application developers is high.

Why Cobol Programmers Are Still Valuable Assets?

Due to the growing popularity of new languages, there aren’t as many potential developers familiar with the Cobol language.  .Since it is built on logical English structural elements, Cobol also has been adapted for almost all types of hardware platforms. It is an intuitively simple language to learn. This trend makes the recruitment of young professionals difficult

Technologies that Easily Merge with Cobol

According to a survey conducted by a major research firm, in 2017, approximately 55% of respondents indicated the intention of modernizing their Cobol apps by the year 2019.  In part, the decisions based on the fact that Cobol easily merges with such standardized IDEs as Eclipse and Visual Studio, and supports the latest versions of enterprise technology. It uses the same contemporary attributes of other languages and supports the latest versions of enterprise technology like Mobile, Cloud, and Managed Code. Economics also plays a part.  Maintaining reliable Cobol is considerably less expensive than introducing a new language to an older system.

Why Companies Are Searching for Cobol Programmers for Hire?

Ten years ago, surveys predicted the number of Cobol programmers would continue to decline due to the retirement of the experts in vital Cobol developer roles. And, the number of entrants to fill the vacancies would be too small. This has seen the average salary of a remote Cobol developer increase significantly. From ATMs to healthcare prescriptions, Cobol touches almost every aspect of.life. The programming language supports and controls more than 85% of all business applications.

Cobol Developer Skills, Tasks, and Responsibilities

However, prospective companies are looking for Cobol developers who understand the business, are armed with diverse skills, and capable of learning new skills.

Following are some typical tasks of a Cobol Developer:

  • Gathering and documenting system requirements.
  • Coding Cobol programs.
  • Maintaining and developing Cobol.
  • Developing, Designing, Coding, and Testing changes to enterprise software applications.
  • Fine Tuning DB2 SQL queries.
  • Implementing changes to Cobol Programs.
  • Defining coding standards to ensure code integrity.

., it is a strong incentive to learn this language due to its low competitiveness compared to more popular languages