This programming language is at an all-time low

If anyone had ever bothered to read how TIOBE arrives at it's BS index you would no that this ranking is just as meaningful as "The best SA websites" or "The best paid IT job". Even if TIOBE had used job-postings on job-portals, this would be no good indication. Especially in industrial and military applications you will find "exotic" languages such as C/C++, ADA, assembler etc. Ada for example was possibly the most robust language when it was introduced a good 30 years ago and included features which provided the robustness/stability needed for defense/military applications.

Not quite sure what Denel used, but we developed mostly in Ada for defense systems and some odd flavors such as Eiffel, Smalltalk. Point being, that just because TIOBE can not find "+COBOL programming" across a representative number of search engines, does not mean the language is dead. If you want to get paid >EUR800/hour you contract out as an Ada/assembler engineer to DoD.
 
And before the C## crowd jumps in: Ada and other "low-level" languages have a valid space in embedded systems, especially for military applications where it is crucial to control the runtime of code. Last thing you want is that some garbage collection takes place while your drone executes a missile guidance algorithm during a critical phase of a mission.

BTW: Most military applications run on real-time-operating systems (RTOS) such as VxWorks.
 
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MagicDude4Eva said:
just because TIOBE can not find "+COBOL programming" across a representative number of search engines, does not mean the language is dead.
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My impression of COBOL is that it basically exists as a career for people that have the required masochistic tendencies to only focus on legacy software solutions. You couldn't pay me double to only focus on legacy software.
 
Garson007 said:
My impression of COBOL is that it basically exists as a career for people that have the required masochistic tendencies to only focus on legacy software solutions. You couldn't pay me double to only focus on legacy software.
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They usually pay 3-4 times the going rate for C# devs were i am.
 
Garson007 said:
My impression of COBOL is that it basically exists as a career for people that have the required masochistic tendencies to only focus on legacy software solutions. You couldn't pay me double to only focus on legacy software.
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You will not find (or struggle to find) that skill-set amongst people under the age of 40. Engineers working on those legacy systems and using Ada, Smalltalk or work on RTOS typically posses a deeper level of analytical thinking and properly understand the inner workings of computing way beyond compiler instructions. All people I know in those legacy environments would have no issue working with modern languages (if you manage to learn assembler/machine code, learning Java/Perl/Php/C## is really not that difficult).

Companies typically pay huge retainers for skills like this. An there is nothing more fulfilling to have a submarine autonomously cross the oceans and collecting samples/heat signatures (and knowing that the code was written in Ada 20 years ago and still works with 100% precision) - job satisfaction right there over any "modern" technology/language :whistle:
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
You will not find (or struggle to find) that skill-set amongst people under the age of 40.
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Exactly my point. People aren't masochists when defining a career.

MagicDude4Eva said:
Engineers working on those legacy systems and using Ada, Smalltalk or work on RTOS typically posses a deeper level of analytical thinking and properly understand the inner workings of computing way beyond compiler instructions.
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Citation needed.

MagicDude4Eva said:
Companies typically pay huge retainers for skills like this.
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Because people aren't masochists.
 
Garson007 said:
Citation needed.
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Ask anyone who worked on classified/military projects and you will understand what goes into projects of that nature and how development happens. My point was about RTOS-projects (i.e. you develop code for the logic board running in a nuclear powerstation/submarine/plane etc) - I do agree that this is not comparable to your average Cobol programmer (or most developers).
 
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