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.
I believe pascal was ported into delphi visual programming.
[...] Coldfusion – 2 job positions in the last 30 days. [...]
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
RPG (Report Program Generator)which started in IBM mainframes in the 1960s… is very much alive. It is still in use in Telecoms(Digitel,PLDT etc),Retail (SM,Duty Free, Puregold, Rustans etc), Banking (Security Bank, Bank of Commerce, etc), Manufacturing (Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda etc), Insurance (AXA life etc), Logistics (DHL etc), Pharma (Wyeth, Glaxo etc), Cosmtetics (Avon)
This is one of the most higly paid skills… because of the scarcity of good talents because this is not being thought in all schools (sa adamson meron dati ewan ko ngayon)…
Though marunong ako ng ibang prog lang but i market myself as an RPG prog/analyst kc malaki ang rate compared sa ibang prog lang na alam ko.
Currently getting 7X,XXX PHP…
Marlow Navigation one of the leading manning agency for seaman in the country still uses the foxpro and employees depend on those foxpro systems so much.
A lot of people say that foxpro is obsolete but on the other hand, more companies it is still relying on this system.
Powerbuilder is still alive. In fact they have already released a new version of it which is PB12 last April 2010 which supports .Net of Microsoft. There is also a software of Microsoft that was made of Powerbuilder until now they are using it, and Microsoft cannot deny that. Sybase is trying to market the new version worldwide.
If you know someone willing to do PB11.5 or PB12 web form programming sideline. let them contact me.
AS/400 is not a programming language. It is an old name for still current IBM hardward. The midrange computer now called IBM I. This is the fastest transaction based database computing system in the world. It is used in any industry where there are high transactions. Wall Street, Staples, Credit Card companies, Wal-Mart, ect… You can run any other hardware, software, operating system, database, and programming language with this server. It is very fast and scalable and versatile. It is on the cutting edge of all servers.
http://www.ibm.com/systems/i
Looking for a PB11.5 Web Form Programmer