A friend of a friend recently moved into the big city from down south. The guy used to work for a local government office in the province as a programmer of sorts. I was sought to help out the guy get a job and I asked him his programming skill sets.
I was surprised that the one he knew were stuff I haven’t encountered in half a decade — Cobol, Pascal, etc. Are they still being used until today?
I checked out JobsDB for those terms and found the results quite surprising:
- Cobol – 23 job positions in the last 30 days.
- Pascal – no positions available in the last 30 days.
- Fortran – 1 job position in the last 30 days.
- Coldfusion – 2 job positions in the last 30 days.
- PowerBuilder – 6 job positions in the last 30 days.
I thought of adding Assembly to the list but I realized a lot of people are still using it for hardware-level programming. C is out but C++ is still active. How about AS 400?
From the list above, only Pascal/TurboPascal is completely written off as non-existent. I remember Pascal as the first programming language I learned back in ‘95 from a dorm mate.
Loading ...
Yeah, there are still companies that are using these programming languages..
Hah, I have Cobol on my resume because of my stint in the banking industry. That and Fortran’s resilience not particularly surprising.
Powerbuilder and Coldfusion’s resilience, on the other hand, is primarily because of difficult-to-change or migrate-from legacy applications. Sometimes, businesses rely too much on the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it mantra”, but usually that has a corresponding “If you can’t afford a new one, don’t replace it — just fix it” mantra.
pascal is phased out. no development has been made anymore on pascal. if my knowledge serves me right, pascal was not really used in software development. it was basically used to teach structural programming.
Cobol is still in demand in Japan. This is because many japanese companies had their software developed before in Cobol. Hiring is basically for maintenance. Philnits or JITSE gives COBOL as an option in the programming part of the exam.
My company still uses AS/400. They even trained close to a hundred fresh grads at our Makati office.
our company uses cobol and powerbuilder for some of their projects…. well, i belong to the project that uses those languages haha. although we hardly modify our cobol programs anymore.
Twitter: mparaz
replied on Mar 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 am (6)
I bet VB6 is still alive, despite Microsoft’s efforts to kill it.
yeah vb6 is still alive, im still using it hehe
I was surprised to see Pascal in the list too. Did you do your homework?
C is out? Come on, Apple does most of its work in Objective-C, and C is still the language of choice in embedded work, drivers, operating systems, libraries of various flavours, etc…
Cobol –> and that’s not the Cobol they teach you in school.
Someone recently called me for a C++ developer position… @ 65K.
I’m a c# major. Lol!
woohoo Foxpro! Clipper! xBase!
wow cobol is still alive and kicking? how about erlang? vb6, maybe. pascal LOL. has anyone coded in lisp?
c or c++ probably will be legendary. hmmmm…
I thought Cobol and Fortran are only words in the history of computers…haha.
i can’t believe their is a company out there still looking for Fortran programmer. Like whoooos gonna deal with that? lol
I still use c++, c and vb6.
cobol, pascal, c and tbasic are good programming foundation and im so thankful that i learned them..
though pascal may not be used nowadays, there are still companies using delphi.
scientists and researchers still prefer fortran because of vast libraries available. and built-in support for complex numbers.
same thing goes for c. and i think will never be obsolete because it brings programmers close to the operating system. relatively low level languages, though requires a lot of time to learn, will always be the choice of programmers doing embedded systems.
java, vb6, etc will always attract new programmers because it takes less time to learn.
Actually C is very much alive, just that it is not listed on job sites, and usually is lumped with C++ or C#
You know how people think, just because C++ is called as such, they assume that it is the “new” C, which isn’t. C is one of the preferred programming language among FLOSS programmers and game developers, not C++.
I even encountered someone who said that why study C and C++ if there is a newer version C/C++ called C#? :p And this guy was a graduate of one of the Top 5 schools in terms of programming here in the Philippines.
Name, just because of the “name”, people assume.
Cobol programmers are one of the highest paid programmers here and abroad (at least from what i hear=)). I guess its because no one really knows it anymore. We were part of an initiative that actually encouraged colleges/universities to bring it back to their curriculum as we are having a hard time getting skilled people into the program.
Yes there will always be older languages that seems to be obsolete but are NOT! I worked in the MIS department of a government institution and I have been also employed in some fast-paced companies.
When I was working in those fast-paced companies, they have funds to readily upgrade IT equipment in the office. The employees are also young to easily adapt to the changing features of software.
Working in the government though is a lot different, there is not enough funds for the IT department. In fact, that goverment institution that I have been is using FOXPRO as their main database – and it is still working nicely, as long as there is a programmer around. The employees are also on their 40’s and 50’s and they really struggle when they get to learn new software (they like to use WORD FOR DOS instead.)
AS/400 is still alive and kicking. Our company actually has more AS/400 programmers than Java programmers. And I think, their pay is quite high because they are hard to find nowadays.
C Will always be C whatever happens. I don’t think it’s end -of-life is nearing…
I would say BASIC..the Beginner All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. I remember during the late 80s when all compat-PCs comes with ROM BASIC.. you can write but you can’t save yay!
and yeah Cobol..Cobol was offered in UP Eng’g this semester under the guidance of IBM. The corporate world still needs highly-paid Cobol programmers.
BASIC (TBASIC, QBASIC, BASICA), Pascal, DBase 11/111+/IV, COBOL, C …… I’m proud that I learned and used these programming languages…..
I believe pascal was ported into delphi visual programming.
C is definitely not out, Linux and Open source uses those languages. I’m a C++ programmer and boy oh boy c++ developers are one of the highest paid developers both here and abroad. Just saying…
Yep, and there is still an unending and very hot debate about C vs C++. C is here to stay.
C is there and will be there whatever happens.
Cobol, Fortran, FoxPro, AS/400 will also still be there until all companies decided to upgrade their systems.
VB6 will die next to Pascal.
C is the best and java
Cobol is very much alive. May I know what happened, ApplesH, to your lobbying Cobol in the curriculum? I also would like to see it happen. Good thing UP offered it, they are seeing the light.
guruako – The program is going strong. The project I am in actually reaped the results of last year’s program which had students from La Salle, MIT etc. I don’t think COBOL will become obsolete in the near future. It will remain in the backend even if the front end has changed its face.
How about bourneshell? is this programming language in demand? in our university our prof. requires us to learn this.
ApplesH – I hope you can convince more schools because you know what? Singapore/Malaysia companies are coming here hunting for Cobol people. If during college they’re given training/course, they can already be hired by local as well as international companies!
What will happen to these programmers if the company decides to shift to new hardware and systems that uses newer programming languages?
C is def. used quite often… I mean, only the linux kernel is about 95% C code.
at work we use C on a day to day basis.
Sybase Powerful builder is the best! but MS will kill it soon, better to transfer before getting caught..
Most banks around the world are still using COBOL as their backend.. =)
he he…i m replying after 1 yr of these article published…
i m in btech 1st yr..i started my programing skills with C…
comments on this article were more informative than article itself…
i heard about Fortran,COBOL,PASCAL…but AS/400 OMG!..just heard first time…
Want to ask a question…does anyone use “Ada”???:D:D
C IS C. I don’t think it will ever be completely obsolete. It’s a tough language to kill. Lots of programming languages were based on it and I still see companies in need of C programmers.
VB6 sucks all the way!
I am a Java programmer but I can consider C and C++ not just P/Ls but Programmers’ Language. There would have been no Java without C/C++.
VB6 is the other way around => Non-Programmers’ Language.
It’s easier to teach Object-Oriented Programming to non-programmers than to teach them to VB6 programmers.
I have high respects for Cobol and Pascal (Delphi) but not VB6.
No offense dudes, VB6 really sucks!
C is definitely not out. It’s indispensable in firmware development, low-level development and middlewares and embedded systems. And there are high-level applications being developed in C.(Check out BSAFE commercial security library. C is definitely not yet obsolete and I don’t think the language that will replace it has been invented yet. C++ and Java are very much in demand but I don’t think these are meant as replacements for C. C++, Java, C# are all high-level languages that are best used in desktop application development but these can never be a good choice for low-level development. Can you imagine writing a firmware or device driver using C# or Java? haha! That’s why C is usually the first language taught to computer majors. Once you know C (and C++) it’s quite easy to learn other languages. C/C++/Java are also the usual the required skills for entry levels/fresh graduates. Also, the reason why there are more job openings for high-level languages like C++, Java, C# here in the Philippines is because, most Software developing companies here produces high-level software applications. There are limited R&D companies here that develops firmwares and other embedded systems.
C language is very much alive, but the programmers are getting scarce. Majority of newly grads are into java, C#, vb.net.I can see why C programmers are getting scarce(hmmn how about Assembly language programmers?). My school is into High Level programming, i think im alone in studying low level programming here at my school(self study). In fact im studying C at this moment. Once I know C, java, C++ will be at breeze when i tackle them later. My next target language to learn is assembly language.(Its part of my CS curriculum but instructors doesn’t teach us ASM instead they teach us VB6! man that sucks. Probably they dont know ASM as well. I cant blame them.) Majority of my classmates are in to Vbnet and Java. Often they criticize me for being anachronistic. hehehehe