Despite being over 60 years old, common business-oriented language (COBOL) continues to be the backbone of critical financial and government systems worldwide. With an estimated 220 billion lines of code still in active use, this legacy programming language powers 95% of ATM transactions and 80% of in-person banking activities.
According to a 2022 Micro Focus survey, the global COBOL application footprint has grown to an unprecedented 775-850 billion lines of code in production systems, far exceeding previous estimates of 200-300 billion lines.
On the other hand, we are witnessing initiatives to drop the COBOL and move to something modern like Java. One good example of this is the IBM Watson Code Assistant.
The community, however, thinks otherwise.
The idea of using AI to replace COBOL is flawed. A COBOL developer on Reddit mentioned that ChatGPT won’t affect the COBOL developer community. All it can do is write the initial bits of code (setting up the divisions, sections and such, maybe a paragraph or two). The generated code looks like it was copied from another place.
“Anything more it does, especially if there is complex logic involved, has to be reviewed in depth by a human because it has very real-world implications. During that time, said humans could be writing the code. More than that, if you ask ChatGPT why it wrote the code it did, you get ‘idk’ (I don’t know) at best. You don’t get that with a human most of the time. Lastly, if a bank or some organisation has to hunt for a specialist, ChatGPT doesn’t even enter the conversation,” he further said.
Why Organisations Can’t Let Go of COBOL
The persistence of COBOL isn’t merely about legacy — it’s about reliability and business criticality. About 92% of organisations consider their COBOL applications strategic to their operations, with 43% having already integrated their COBOL systems with cloud infrastructure. This tells us a lot about COBOL and why organisaitons can’t let it go, especially the financial sector, where it processes millions of transactions daily.
Organisations are choosing to modernise COBOL systems instead of replacing them. The survey reveals that 64% of companies plan to modernise their COBOL applications, while 72% view modernisation as a key business strategy.
Due to continuous efforts, COBOL has successfully adapted to modern computing requirements. Today, COBOL applications can interact with HTML, JSON, XML, and even generative AI technologies. This adaptability allows organisations to maintain their core COBOL systems while leveraging new technologies for front-end development and user interfaces.
Earlier, there were very few options available for developers who wanted to learn COBOL, as it was built for mainframe computers. Now, community efforts like GnuCOBOL have made COBOL available to every developer.
What Does the COBOL Developer Market Look Like?
The answer to this question will remain positive for at least a few years. COBOL career can help developers achieve high salaries. Additionally, the amount of COBOL code out there is really high, and for that reason, industries will need experts for a long time.
The main problem with this technology is that there are only a few numbers of companies that need this skill. So if companies don’t need the skill anymore or employees don’t want to work there anymore, they may have to move hundreds of kilometres to live near their new employer. A Reddit user recommended that if one wants to get into COBOL development, they should try to become the mainframe expert, but also keep in touch with other technologies.
When AIM checked the current job market, as of June 25, 2024, the average salary for COBOL developers was found to be $84,000 USD, which could go up to $112,000.
If any developer wants to become proficient in COBOL, it is advised that they learn the entire tech stack for legacy systems, including COBOL, CICS, DB2, Syncsort, IBM Utilities, Changeman, and JCL scripting.
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