75-year-old programmer founded the company for the maintenance of computer systems at COBOL

Bill Hinsho is an ordinary 75-year-old man who retired many years ago. He has 32 grandsons and great-grandsons, so one may think that Hinsho is occupied by his descendants. He may spend a lot of time on his family, but he has one more lesson - the retiree runs a fairly large company that services systems on COBOL , a programming language 60 years ago.

He himself is a high-level programmer who began working in his specialty back in the 60s of the last century. Then computers occupied entire rooms, and the data had to be entered on punched cards. But COBOL is still used, the importance of this language should not be underestimated.

Yes, it has been replaced in many areas by new programming languages, Java, C, Python. But the hardware and software platforms developed then work now . Of course, they are modified and fully correspond to the spirit of the times, but the basis remains the same. In the US, for example, the financial sector depends largely on such systems, which were created in the 70s and 80s. Here is a small infographic that may surprise many .
')


The principle “works - don't touch” was well known then, they use it even now. That is, if there is some kind of financial transaction management system that works well, why change it? Many leaders think so, and they are probably right. The only drawback of such systems is that sometimes they still fail.

But modern specialists who can fix something that works on Cobol can be counted on the fingers. But COBOL still provides transactions worth more than $ 3 billion a day. This amount includes transactions with accounts, life insurance, credit services, work of ATMs. Just a few seconds of the idleness of any nodal system on COBOL can cost businesses many millions of dollars.

After Hinsho retired, he often received offers from banks and other organizations. The meaning of the proposals is to repair what is broken in any of the COBOL-systems. The retired programmer initially wanted to rest from the works of the righteous, but then he decided to take up the business again by organizing his own company, which deals exclusively with COBOL. A couple of dozen experts help him in this.

The company, which is called COBOL Cowboys , was invited to work by several other programmers who went on a well-deserved rest, as well as several "young employees", whose age is 40-50 years. The company earns very well, because an experienced COBOL programmer is free to receive from $ 100 per hour. In the near future, the "cowboys" will have a lot of work, because no one is going to refuse from COBOL and the old systems.



One of the ex-managers of Barclays PLC told that there are a lot of computer systems in the financial sector that I would like to modernize. But this is fraught with complex problems that few people want to solve. “These are complex, complex issues. Systems of different generations can be extremely difficult to combine with each other or upgrade, ”says Anthony Jenkins, who previously held the position of executive director of Barclays PLC.

So, if a bank has several millions of customers, and the work of their accounts depends on COBOL, few people decide to change the existing order of things. And why, if everything works? “A programming language cannot be bad just because it is 50 years old,” says Donna Dilliberger, a COBOL-based mainframe specialist. Hinsho agrees with her, he says that many systems, written by him decades ago, are still used by banks.

Of course, this cannot last forever, banks and other organizations are gradually replacing the old systems with new ones. For example, so did one of the largest banks in Australia. However, the transition from COBOL and old hardware platforms to new ones took four years and $ 749.9 million.

But many more years specialists with experience will have a lot of work at the age. For example, one of the COBOL programmers was fired in 2012. In his place took a young man with ambitions. Two years later, a specialist who was dismissed by a bank, then already a pensioner, started working again at a bank, having received a lucrative contract. The newcomer could not cope with the software and hardware complex of the bank and had to call for help the old guard.

Well, COBOL Cowboys, as far as can be judged, will receive lucrative offers for many more years.