cobol experiences

Hi.

I have a job offering involving cobol programming.
Does anyone have any experiences using cobol? Is it "fun" working with or is it a nightmare? It seems....... old.

The thing is, I want to work for the company, but I am unsure if I want to work with cobol...

 

hmm ... I got cobol when I was in school and I must say it's a nightmare. Forget everything you know about the current programming languages like C++, Delphi, java, etc ... It is totally different and I hated it.

Have a look at some sample code : (and yes the spaces are important)

   $ SET SOURCEFORMAT"FREE"
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID.  Multiplier.
AUTHOR.  Michael Coughlan.
* Example program using ACCEPT, DISPLAY and MULTIPLY to 
* get two single digit numbers from the user and multiply them together

DATA DIVISION.

WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01  Num1                                PIC 9  VALUE ZEROS.
01  Num2                                PIC 9  VALUE ZEROS.
01  Result                              PIC 99 VALUE ZEROS.

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    DISPLAY "Enter first number  (1 digit) : " WITH NO ADVANCING.
    ACCEPT Num1.
    DISPLAY "Enter second number (1 digit) : " WITH NO ADVANCING.
    ACCEPT Num2.
    MULTIPLY Num1 BY Num2 GIVING Result.
    DISPLAY "Result is = ", Result.
    STOP RUN.

Code (markup):

Have a look at this site for some more cobol programming info.

Then again if you position yourself as a cobol expert you can make some good money.

 

Now, no funny comments you lot but I used to program in cobol (when it was fairly new)

cobol is a highly structured and very unforgiving programming environment. You need to specify the parameters you are going to use early on in the program and then get to the working section. If you have a logical mind and don't mind laying stuff out in enormous flowcharts and programming nested loops then cobol is for you. If all that sounds crap, forget it. Maybe you should try it out to see how you like it?

 

Thanks for your replies. I decided to not take the job. It turned out that my yearly salary would decrease about 30 000 NOK = 4500 USD compared to my current job