Hi folks! I am overwhelmed by your positive comments. I wish I could keep up on it all! I might do a "thank you" stream sometime soon. Seriously, you all mean the world to me and I'm so thankful for your support.
Congratulations, Veronica, for knowing what you want to do and for doing it! I look forward to seeing more of you on this excellent channel. My first job was coding in COBOL (in 1988). Since I'm close to retirement, I'm lucky that that I'm able to spend my remaining programming years looking after a legacy (trading) system. My organization's IT leaves me and my team alone provided that we meet security requirements. The stinky IT puppets don't get to waste my time with pointless meetings.
Curious... Did you report my previous comment about podcasting as spam or was that an automatic google thing or just some person in these comments? If I offended you somehow, it would be good to understand so I don't repeat. Thanks
Explaining tech/consulting is DEFINITELY going to be a good place to be, when it comes to job security, long term/as long as possible, with the rise of automation/AI/machines/robots, I honestly think, at some point, this is our future; An Automated-Post-Scarcity-Society; The Society im trying to define is one where AI/Robots/automation is involved,without any money involved,but ecological/certain materials/elements,would be hard to come by/limited, but everyones basic needs would be handled/met and MAYBE SLIGHTLY more than basic needs,if certain things are available and everyones basic needs are met for that month,certain other items might also be available,but everything would be done autonomously/automatically/without human intervention, mostly,other than,government,voting systems/congress,Mayors,governor's,presidents,regulating/regulation,consulting, ethical decision making/systems/optimizing the autonomous manufacturing and delivery systems/infrastructures,to make it better/also to mitigate/avoid/minimize harm,that comes from the over all system/unforseen/foreseen harm/analytics,to a degree/most AI systems are designed to be as efficient as possible/its not necessarily designed to look at certain things,an example of this would be,if someone killed off all of one animal,the animal that the extinct animal ate,could over populate, and in turn kill off another animal,because the animals food supply could become limited,due to over population,this is just one example of adverse effects that need to be found/prevented/mitigated; Also technological/ecological advancements would be valued/anything that betters the over all system,also all of these changes/improvements/advancements,creates new variables and COULD cause damage,so these type things also need to be analyzed, but most tasks/jobs would become completely autonomous.
@@VeronicaExplainsGovernment/banks/businesses are DEFINITELY known for using old technology/old equipment/old software, even when their advised not to, for security reasons/practicality/because work loads are being slowed down, due to A LOT of factors, that shouldn't even have to be thought about nowadays/ since like 2010/2011/ like 11 or 12 years ago/using software/hardware from the 70s/80s just isn't practical, AT ALL, / newer/modern tech/software has become affordable nowadays, for basically anyone, but yes I know companies/businesses/banks/governments want to hang on to the past, I think if they could get away with it, they would use paper/filing cabinets/stamps/the pony express vs email/servers/networks/digital calendars and so on.
I'd been in mainframe IT for 35 years. The last time my contract was cut, I decided I was done with the corporate world. I was tired of being a number in a system that a Sr VP could cut so he could earn his bonus. I now sell Viking/Medieval clothing at medieval and renaissance faires across the country. WAY harder job, lot less money, but so much more satisfying.
I just recently dodged a bullet with a job that looked really good on paper and that I was told flat out that I the top pick for by far - but the company axed the position days before they sent me the offer letter because upper management wanted to make their Q3 books look slightly better by not filling the position - a position I could tell just from the interview they desperately needed filled. The guy interviewing me was the only person doing the work and was extremely overloaded. It would have been a lot of fun, but given that the longest of my last 4 jobs were 1 year (they wanted me back in the office after telling me I wouldn't need to be in the office when I was hired - I resisted and they made up an excuse to fire me), 2 years (project was finished and was handed off to a team of maintainers that I had trained), 8 months (they hired me with the expectation that they could sell their services to clients and then couldn't, so I spent 75% of my time helping other people with their jobs instead of doing mine and they eventually realized they didn't have work for me and let me go) and 4 month (extremely bad fit), I'm very happy that they axed the position before I was hired and not 6 months down the line. Now I'm working for a university IT department, which is extremely nice. I started my career working for a university and I'm so glad to be doing so again - this time I'm even covered by a union. I'm even getting paid better than I would have been at the job that fell through, and this is 100% linux/unix rather than 75%/25% Linux/Windows. It's only been a couple months and I'm mostly liking where I am - my only complaint is that they hired me at an awkward time and there's not a lot for me to do - due to vacations and such, the big projects I'll be working on are delayed and waiting on other teams - so I've had a handful of pretty small/trivial tasks. Oh, and the fucking macbook they gave me. I somehow managed to be a (mostly) Linux admin for a decade and avoid macs entirely until now and I can not stand that thing - my hatred for windows pales in comparison to my hatred for that device.
@@VeronicaExplainstalking is a great way to get things off/out your brain... I suggested Podcasting via the 2.0 spec as a additional way to so just that... Like blogging its a longer form then video and can provide a different outlet for Cobol or whatever else... Someone apparently felt my comment was spam... 1st and only spam report in the history of my account 😢
I think the best description of COBOL was from one of my University Professors: COBOL was designed with the objective that non-technical mangers could read the programs, the result was a language that nobody could read and still be sane!
No, COBOL was there because you could hire people off the street, train them, have an analyst give them decent specifications, and they would generate acceptable code. The advantage of COBOL is that it is a restricted tool - it is pretty hard (nigh impossible) for a newbie to screw up in the ways that many a rookie C programmer does. Static calls, no pointers and no dynamic allocation of memory in vanilla COBOL was great for financial calculations. (Most of the time. I did have to use dynamic allocation for telecom account processing for accounts that could have hundreds of thousands of calls in a day. That was the only need for it in over 20 years of COBOL programming.)
Hello Verónica, I'm from a small country called Uruguay in South America. I discovered your channel a while ago, and I loved the way you communicate and explain topics. I'm not a programmer or anything like that; I work in the field of cybersecurity. Nevertheless, all the topics you've covered on your channel have interested me. I really like the vintage-tech style you bring to the videos. I'm very glad that you've been able to take the step of doing what you love, because, after all, in the little time we have on this Earth, that's what we should do. I promise to watch all the videos you upload to support making this your lifelong job. Sending you a hug and congratulations.
Hi. I'm your neighbor (literally). I live in Rio Grande do Sul near Chui, the southernmost border of Brazil. Many people call those who live near this region "Brasiguaio", because Spanish is already mixed with Portuguese, and the Uruguayan Gaucho and Brazilian Gaucho culture unites the two regions of the countries into one. Now that I've made my presentation, a curiosity. I have seen a movement some time ago of many Brazilian programmers going to Uruguay. Despite Brazil having a much richer market in technology, Uruguay has made a great incentive to take programmers from here to the other side of the border. It's been working, I have two friends from São Paulo who are in Montevideo.
As an engineer slash artist that has quit jobs and not quit jobs. I applaud you. It’s always so good to see other people not waste their time and potential
How about teaching us COBOL too? There's not a lot of high quality content about it out there, and there's definitely interest. I'd also be interested in Ada, and nobody's doing that either.
Soon I'll be able to do so! One of the challenges for me has always been ownership of code written. The end of the road for my active COBOL development time will facilitate more discussion! :)
@@VeronicaExplains as someone who had years of COBOL programming on non-IBM (mini/mainframe) systems, I've always wondered what your platform was and hearing that it was X86 (OpenCOBOL/GNUCobol or Micro Focus I would imagine) makes my heart leap! It's tough to find a gig out there for COBOL that's on an IBM platform hence the requirements of JCLandDB2 for most current openings. My NCR/Unisys COBOL background is good enough for standard COBOL (ANSI) and can get the job done but if one doesn't have IBM experience you're usually not considered. Excited for you and for the new content especially your COBOL history. Good luck!!
@@markgreen2170 For fun? For profit? Some of us just simply like to constantly learn to stuff; we get our kicks out of learning. Some want to learn COBOL because one can make a life-long career out of it. For some, it's both.
If people truly understood how much old code is still running from 40+ years ago they'd run screaming into the night. My first job out of college in 2010 had me working at least part-time in Borland C++ with DOS, modding PASCAL libs and expanding ancient CLI-based database subscriptions that are in all likelihood still running today. None of my peers could do the work, and at the time only one part time contractor was working on those systems. The only reason I could do the work is from a young age my oldest brother had started me on Commodore64, then MS-DOS, and finally onto a Windows environment. I was born in '85, but I had the experience with systems older than I was from a very young age - never would I have guessed the advantage it would have provided for me. Great video, thank you. Best of luck with this big change.
Very cool! Changes are scary, I know! I can feel it in your speech (even you’re never saying it clearly)… and I’m very glad you’ve taken that step tho. I hope - even believe - you’re gonna be very happy with your decision. Since I’ve been following your Web content production, I can say that’s “YOU.” Good luck, and go for it!! 🤗 Reach and help everyone you can.
Behind you all the way! I spent 9 years in IT working from home. Got laid off just before COVID, then made the HUGE leap to become a Middle School Engineering teacher! Best decision ever! Good luck with your awesome journey!
Cobol was my first language in College (1981 to 1985). On an IBM 4341. Then my first job at Atomic Energy of Canada, was CICS Cobol, along with JCL. Being largely an engineering company, I dabbled in PL/1 as well. I turned 60 this September and after forty years of code, I retired. The last part of my career was mostly Oracle PL/SQL. But dropping a deck of cards was painful :)
I'm very happy for you, Veronica. I wish you all the best in your new endeavors, and I look forward to seeing more frequent videos from you in the future. 🎉
Did COBOL for 17 years then a bunch of other languages for another 15 years. I like using Linux. Typing this response on a Linux Mint operating system. I offer COBOL part time remote but I'm not doing it 40 hours a week ever again. So glad you are going back to doing what you really enjoy. I like the code and building systems and I hate being a manager and going to meetings watching people argue for an hour.
It's quite a leap to leave the stability and familiarity of a career and pursue your passion, that's very admirable and awesome! I hope I can do the same someday
I learned COBOL and RPG II way back in 78 in JR College, hated RPG II, LOVED COBOL, only offered a job in a small town in west Texas, turned it down after I thought about it for a week, never got the opportunity to work in COBOL, regrettably.
Congratulations on making the difficult decison to cast off the "golden hand-cuffs" and focus on a fulltime teaching career here and other venues. I'm a long time consumer of your content and a brand new Patreon supporter. You are a talented and passionate teacher and you have my best wishes for success. Personal note: I wrote COBOL programs on HP3000 systems for 11 years until 1991. I moved on to other programming languages and never missed leaving COBOL behind,
Well done !!! I haven't programmed in COBOL since about 1993 !! Amazing how much of that legacy stuff is still about. But follow your heart and you will never go far wrong. I quit most of my 9-5 IT admin to focus on the more important things in life (and my retro Commodores :D) ...life is really short and I wasted so many of my best years in a haze of 100+ Hour weeks..... Great you have belief in yourself, you will do well, and I look forward to more brilliant videos :) Thank you
Congrats on the big move, Veronica. Your musicianship has always been evident, as are your talents as an educator and creator. Here's wishing great things for you!
I took my first programming class (COBOL) 43 years ago. COBOL was also my first development job. I think your making the right move. COBOL has had lasting power that other languages could only dream about. I don't know what the COBOL scene is like today but all of our applications were just batch processing and printouts. When I first started working we didn't even have monitors. We can do a lot more today but things are also more difficult today. The COBOL programmers back then had it pretty good. I wish you the best on your journey. I've just subscribed to your channel and look forward to see your clips.
More Veronica videos sounds amazing! Your upbeat approach and positive messaging are highlights to my week when you release something new. Best of luck on the new direction!
I hope you'll find time to do a "beginner to intermediate in Cobol" series, which takes us from hello world through to a simple but complete accounting application or the like, then when it does well, start a second series of two-to-three part Cobol advanced explainer videos, on those complex subjects that come up once you're past the intermediate
@@GladeSwope : COBOL isn’t hard to read. It was designed to have sentence like structure. Maybe the original programmer wasn’t a very COBOL programmer. That’s not COBOLs fault. BTW, I can code in multiple computer languages, including COBOL, but prefer Assembly Language as well.
Uhm that does not sound like a very productive use of her time really I think there are a lot of videos like that on youtube that are competing, also does her channel even focus on instruction videos cause on my first glance it's mostly odd-ware or very specific short tutorials.
In 1992 I told my dad that I hated my first programming job. It was on an IBM mainframe using COBOL and JCL. He told me to take some classes on the AS/400. I've been there ever since. I literally could have done the work of my 12 mainframe-based teammates by myself. The AS/400 was exponentially more reliable, intuitive, and faster than the mainframe. I have yet to meet a single person who has been on the iSeries who has hated it.
GO FOR IT!!!! Srsly, I believe from time to time I hit the same questioning about my relationship with ppl (comparing with fellows in the same area) and I'm happy that you found a middle ground between tech and human dynamics. I enjoy your videos a lot and, from time to time I get back to 'em if I need more info. I wish you all the best and regards from Brazil =)
I really hope you do more videos on Debian. I'm getting ready for my first forays into Linux outside of logging into a Linux server at school. Your videos on RHEL and Debian's 30th are what finally tipped the balance between Debian and Ubuntu or Fedora.
Hey Veronica, thanks for continuing this awesome work you are doing here on RUclips. It's great to see you pursue your passion and starting a new career isn't easy, but the community stands with you and we hope good things will come out for the channel.
I'm kind of the opposite, I enjoy staying "behind the scenes", just knowing that my work makes something else function or function better than before. I always was a little jealous of people who can do this stuff, talking to people and exposing themselves. Best wishes to you and your channel, I hope you can make it work.
Good for you, you're a pretty young COBOL programmer as the average age on them is about 60+ these days. We still run an ERP system that runs on IBM-I infrastructure (AS400 architecture). I told my daughter (Who studies Computer Science/Programming) and she loves behind the scenes stuff being an introvert, told her it would be good money if she learned COBOL :)
Awesome and congrats! Making this change can be scary for sure. You have a ton of support in retro computer and tech community. I'm super excited to see what comes next, especially with your channel and content. Now go get on with your bad self 🙂
Good luck! If you find the time, I would love to learn more about you experiences and suggestions with legacy software. I do not have to deal with Cobol, but all successful software will some day become legacy. Better be prepared.
I taught COBOL programming for about 20 years. Most of it is still in my brain somewhere. It would be interesting to see what changes have been made to the language. Then I found Unix and Linux, the internet happened and I switched to teaching Unix/Linux system administration until retirement. I did the COBOL on IBM 1401 and later Burroughs Medium System and IBM 4300. The Burrroughs Medium Systems were built as COBOL machines. It had some hardware instructions that made COBOL programs quite efficient. It also did decimal arithmetic in integer and floating point and even had decimal memory addressing - no hex conversion needed. Fun days.
Congrats to you. It’s always best to love what you do and who you work with. I wish you the best of luck on your journey! I’d love to see you talk about mixing music creation and tools to facilitate it on Linux. I’m a Linux user as well as learning piano (on a digital piano) and don’t know anything about the tools Linux has to work with.
Thank you! I plan to do a bit more about music making on Linux, as it's not the focus of many of the music channels and it's definitely a *whole thing*. As someone who's been making music on Linux since around 2006 or so, there's a lot to talk about!
Huh, this is about the first time that yt has recommended a new channel that i am really interested in. Good luck with your decision, i will be around to watch.
Good for you!! It's so nice to see a fellow tech geek take control of their destiny and make their future their own. You are an inspiration. Be ready for the lows, they will make you doubt this decision, but you will prevail, 100%.
Thank you so much! As far as the sound on the outro, pretty sure it's my Subdecay Liquid Sunshine (overdrive pedal) going into my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. If I remember correctly, I also used a JHS 3-series distortion DI'd right into my interface for the solo part (not sponsored by any of the aforementioned brands, just like their stuff).
This randomly popped into my feed. I work in IT and a long time ago I heard about COBOL being a language used for old banking software and that a lot of the programmers are retiring. It sounds like a good way to make money. I hope that your new career brings you happiness! I like IT because I get to talk to people. I used to work Pest Control and I lived in Greenville, California which was a very small town in a very low populated national forest. I did it for 5 years and I became incredibly lonely since I worked alone and I was always on the road. I can relate!
Scary Changes but I hope they lead to good things. Also I could so totally see you putting out COBAL or other videos even if it was a training series behind patreon or kofi or something? I'm not much into programming but I do want to learn a little to do things at home.
60-hour workweeks are tough to do for a three-month stretch. Years ago, the jobs I had required me to do this for three or four years. I got SO burned out from it, that I haven't worked in years--not since 2009. This is aside from an occasional temp job that lasted for just a few days, here and there. Best of luck to you.
My understanding (as a Canadian) is if you don't have a "traditional" job in America, health insurance is extremely expensive (e.g. COBRA). Given how small this channel is (for now), how much of a hit will health insurance be to your finances?
I don't want to get too into the weeds publicly here, other than to say that our health insurance in the United States is pretty awful, and I'm lucky to have coverage through another member of the household at present.
@@VeronicaExplains Awful is an understatement. I had to go to the emergency room a week after I was laid off from my job and the bill came in just under $20k, yep, count it $20,000. Healthcare is definitely a concern for my next steps too.
COBRA is the most expensive way to buy insurance. Individuals have the ability to buy direct from the insurers, which does cut the cost pretty dramatically. I'm a contract-for-hire worker, paying my own insurance every month, and it's doable.
@@fivevs1 I suspect most COBOL code today is running in an emulated "Big Iron" environment. I saw this happen 20 years ago, pushed by a "Big Iron" purveyor themselves (Unisys).
Back when I was a young teenager, maybe in 1998 or so, I did a programming course at night. There was an introduction to COBOL as part of the course but the instructor told me I didn't need to turn up because by the time I was old enough to work in the area, nobody would use COBOL anymore. A quarter of a century later...
As a new viewer who loves your “Miss Frizzle meets Bill Nye Approach” and your intro music, I’m excited to see you more out in front doing the explains 🖖🏼🤙🏼
would love to hear a little more about working in cobol, do you all commit stuff to git, are there unit tests and code reviews? theres testing environments too im guessing? how often is code pushed?
Ooooo, I'd love to cover all of that at some point. I've seen a lot of COBOL using bespoke versioning such as renaming an old file from FILE.CBL to FILE.CBL.BAK_YYMMDD, that sort of thing. That's mostly for less maintained codebases, though- I often script out a conversion to git for those and then use git going forward. Proper unit tests aren't baked into any of the projects I work on but I fake it out with compiler tests- as I compile a program I script out some additional tests to make sure the data does what I expect it to (essentially "test-driven development"). My guess is that some compilers or runtimes might even allow some sort of unit testing, but licensing has always been trouble at my small scale. Larger teams probably have a much easier time building proper tests.
I so understand. IT was my dream as a teenager and work for decades. Today im only have it as a hobby. Sometimes I still end up doing those 16 h days but sometimes I have a few days totally off and just do my other hobbies. I do my blog on IT regularly and test new apps regularly, except for the summer when my other hobbies take most of my time. IT is for me like a condition not an illness. I hope you find yourself in a happier place.
Legacy systems transitions is something I've had a fascination with for ages... Very fascinating talk. I didn't know what any of the terms were called...
If you want to get into it, it's pretty straight forward. It's a much smaller learning curve than a lot of other languages because, while archaic, it was intended for a particular use case and isn't the swiss army knife that things like C, C++, Perl and Python became.
Oh, the money is great. Someone asked me what I'll miss about COBOL day-to-day, and I definitely said "getting paid to do COBOL." Stable contracts, good pay, reasonably predictable work. It has a ton of advantages.
More power to you! Old employers not calling you after you quit COBOL development? I still get development emails and text from inside my department and I have not actively coded in decades. Good that you are doing what you enjoy, my the force be with you. You might want to consider getting a sponsor if you are willing, it seems to be a stable supplement. I could never do what you do, I enjoy being behind the scenes and not having to deal with people directly for the most part.
wow haven't heard the word 'cobol' in so long...I started in IT in '78 in operations hanging tapes, printing reports on impact printers, bursting reports, moved to systems, programming in COBOL on Honeywell Mainframe , moved on to DBA role and then as a consultant in data base conversion and data architect for last 35 years....been a great career..good timing and some luck.
I used to work in Computer repair in the era of the 486 to Pentium II. The shop that I worked out of also sold used computers mostly 286s. These computers were very old even in those days, but they had basic games and word processing on them. Nobody wanted to work on those computers, except for one guy, but that guy made bank, and those computers easily made us as much money as our new computer sales. There's always money in Legacy systems! I heard something interesting on the Tim Ferriss podcast recently… He says that he only does gigs for either free because he loves the idea so much or the paycheck has to be the biggest paycheck he's ever gotten in his life. Something to consider, good luck!
I'm a retired software engineer and consultant. There are so many stories to tell. Many of us have the same stories of corporate politics, narcissistic manners, and crazy group dynamics. On the subject of COBOL, it's actually a very efficient language designed for very slick conversion into compact machine code without the need of a runtime interpreter. For preparing bare-bones reports, it's excellent. I didn't do a lot of COBOL, but when I did, it felt like running assembler code on a mainframe -- super fast and so simple not much could mysteriously go wrong.
I have only just today found your channel, and I'm in love. sorry, not like that. I love your enthusiasm and excitement about the dull nerdy crap I like. I really hope you do find your place at the front. this video, in particular, brought a lump to my throat. you're starting a new chapter, and it looks like your future is bright! I guess I'm going to have to add yet another Patreon payout to my list!
My first ever IT gig was writing COBOL for a telecom billing system. System was an IBM3790 controlled by JCL.. DB2. DB. It had a robotic silo that would load the tapes. I loved that job..
At the start of my career I was a COBOL developer, but they would not let me do C on Linux, so I had to quit that job and I became a ... windows engineer and C# developer, then trainer and architect, and I felt very happy about the change: congrats, have a lot of fun teaching, that is the nicest job possible!
Hi Veronica. Just wanted to say good luck with whatever you do in the future. It's a bold and scary decision to quit your job - I know, I did just that exactly 1 year ago. Like you I worked on legacy systems that are still in use by my old employer, based on the Centura development IDE that was popular with many UK financial companies in the 1990's. I quit because they no longer appreciated the skills that I have. In the last year I have taken a career break to do some home improvement projects and to think about my future career path. I'm also of an age that it would be possible for me to stop full time employment and take retirement. Even so, I'm still looking out for new work - maybe something will turn up. PS. I learnt COBOL at college along with FORTRAN and other languages :-)
Ah, souvenirs. My first job after graduation in the late 80s was to revamp COBOL programs from the 60s. I remember the flow chats drawn on tracing paper so brittle they were veeery difficult to unfold, and the orange monitor of the giganormous Bull DPS9000 running GCOS 7. I've left the field for years, but indeed, this was fun.
Good luck. With your COBOL experience and admin experience, you may want to see about doing some temporary work as a stop gap until your channel goes into full swing. Best wishes -- fellow programmer also tired of the 6am Monday crisis scenarios.
Veronica, congrats! ironically, I just did the exact opposite! After 34 years in IT, with the last 15 being on the front lines supporting users, I decided to take a left turn and move to RPG/ILE programming on an IBM i platform! I can't wait.
Honestly, I don't know how you did it. Yes, legacy is a stable job with good pay. I specialized in pre-OSX Mac, AS/400, and Cobol. But when a company would modernize, I would have to start over, and it got tiring. I, however, was not lucky enough to have a fairly popular RUclips channel, so I just moved into being a Mac system administrator, something I already did in addition. Good luck on your transition. Love your channel!
I think a good strat is to make cobol shorts to lure people in with shiny graphics. 😂 but thanks Veronica dope to see you teaching and taking a break. Working with legacy systems was hell, but they're not going away anytime soon.
Hi, Veronica. Since the first time I watched your video, I like how you communicate your ideas, how you talk. It feels like you are blessed with your voice. And my random thought imagine that you are being a podcaster or interviewer who talks a lot about tech 😄.
As a junior web developer I am glad to see people are still employed with these old technologies. People get so scared when new tech comes out thinking that everyone will lose their jobs when its just not the case
I knew i never wanted to touch COBOL again after my one and only class in it waay back when I was getting my CS degree 35 years ago. Bless your courage!!
I am sure this change will bring you back all alive and refreshed, have a good break, rest well and listen to your inner voice. I will be waiting for your videos
I'm a "behind the scenes" data engineer. But I can totally understand your goals, your true self. Thanks for having the courage to make such a big change.
I studied computer science at college using COBOL and since then I've had to use it professionally exactly 0 times. This is a good thing because the worst of times would have been so much worse had COBOL been involved. Good luck with VE on the YouToobs, I'll be tuning in from time to time.
I'm amazed at how you've made it this far. There were 2.5 years in my life when I developed banking systems. The technology wasn't very old, maybe 6-7 years old, but it bothered me that the tech world was running past me. I quit after 2.5 years.
Met a COBOL dev bloke after I was working in IT for [charity case] _BMW Porsche_ [corrupt] _VW Suzuki JCB Hyundai_ and they terminated me with pneumonia - now UK excess "won't be *programming* the thermostat any more" is 10,000s a quarter
WOOOT!!! ❤❤❤ AWESOME! You being you without the distraction will ROCK. (I thought the channel was your full-time gig because your videos are so good) A star shines on the hour of this decision! 😊
Lol, nice Sim City 2000 reference. Find difficult to understand, as you had my dream job and dealing with people day to day would be my nightmare, but if you love it so much that is awesome! I can still remember my coding lecturer at college, he is awesome.
Stay strong Linux Mom 💪! I love your work, your charisma and passion for software and hardware. I've learnt a lot from you and I really appreciate it. You're one of my favorite you-tubers from all web. I hope you could accomplish your goals. Greetings from Argentina.
This is the first of your videos to pop up in my feed, and you can count me as a new subscriber; I hope it helps in some small way. My software career began with COBOL and FORTRAN back when they were current languages. I’m semi-retired now, and am familiar with the feeling that the position you’re in just isn’t right for you. I admire your courage, confidence and self-awareness and hope you find a path that suits you!
Best of luck! 😊 When I started my current job the plan was to leave our mainframe (COBOL + assembly) the next 5 years. People around it said ten years. Well, it took 15 and honestly I'd say they are not done yet. Some of the code that came out of that, especially related to hierarchical databases, is just mindblowingly stupid. It's not bad code per se - they just didn't deal with the database model really well... What I am saying is, don't be surprised if you get a call for some "short time" consulting. We had to pay a third party company to stay in business for more than 15 years instead of retiring... At least there was another company using the same product...
Wow, I escaped CICS, COBOL, Telon, IMS in the early 90s, and have lost count of how many programming and scripting languages I have used in my career since then. I still get job offers for COBOL work in overseas locations, so there's still a lot of important legacy code working out there! New sub, as I am a recent Linux convert, always learning.
Hi. Just subscribed to you. . I started out with Fortran and COBOL in the mid 70’s. I’m retired now after going through a Unix/c language phase. I ended up in QA after the power that be sent so many of the coding jobs offshore. I’m praying for you, girl
Happy to be a new subscriber, these videos bring me joy and remind me of my past. I appreciate how articulate you are, thanks for bringing us along for the ride. 😎
please teach us COBAL..I was a system admin but iIquit that job way before iIwas a professional. Now iIwaminterested in that profession again because of you.
I'm looking at starting a new career myself, and I've wanted to learn how to code for a long time. I've never thought about legacy systems before. Your "I'm quitting" video might have just sparked a new start for me ngl. A new career with job stability sounds amazing.
COBOL was the first language that I learnt back in '93. Very fast for batch jobs and very artistic! I actually wrote a COBOL program generator in C to cut down on writing code. What days!!
Hi folks! I am overwhelmed by your positive comments. I wish I could keep up on it all!
I might do a "thank you" stream sometime soon. Seriously, you all mean the world to me and I'm so thankful for your support.
Also, those of you who think COBOL has been dead for decades- go ask your bank or government if they have COBOL jobs. :P
Congratulations, Veronica, for knowing what you want to do and for doing it! I look forward to seeing more of you on this excellent channel.
My first job was coding in COBOL (in 1988). Since I'm close to retirement, I'm lucky that that I'm able to spend my remaining programming years looking after a legacy (trading) system. My organization's IT leaves me and my team alone provided that we meet security requirements. The stinky IT puppets don't get to waste my time with pointless meetings.
Curious... Did you report my previous comment about podcasting as spam or was that an automatic google thing or just some person in these comments?
If I offended you somehow, it would be good to understand so I don't repeat.
Thanks
Explaining tech/consulting is DEFINITELY going to be a good place to be, when it comes to job security, long term/as long as possible, with the rise of automation/AI/machines/robots, I honestly think, at some point, this is our future;
An Automated-Post-Scarcity-Society;
The Society im trying to define is one where AI/Robots/automation is involved,without any money involved,but ecological/certain materials/elements,would be hard to come by/limited, but everyones basic needs would be handled/met and MAYBE SLIGHTLY more than basic needs,if certain things are available and everyones basic needs are met for that month,certain other items might also be available,but everything would be done autonomously/automatically/without human intervention, mostly,other than,government,voting systems/congress,Mayors,governor's,presidents,regulating/regulation,consulting, ethical decision making/systems/optimizing the autonomous manufacturing and delivery systems/infrastructures,to make it better/also to mitigate/avoid/minimize harm,that comes from the over all system/unforseen/foreseen harm/analytics,to a degree/most AI systems are designed to be as efficient as possible/its not necessarily designed to look at certain things,an example of this would be,if someone killed off all of one animal,the animal that the extinct animal ate,could over populate, and in turn kill off another animal,because the animals food supply could become limited,due to over population,this is just one example of adverse effects that need to be found/prevented/mitigated; Also technological/ecological advancements would be valued/anything that betters the over all system,also all of these changes/improvements/advancements,creates new variables and COULD cause damage,so these type things also need to be analyzed, but most tasks/jobs would become completely autonomous.
@@VeronicaExplainsGovernment/banks/businesses are DEFINITELY known for using old technology/old equipment/old software, even when their advised not to, for security reasons/practicality/because work loads are being slowed down, due to A LOT of factors, that shouldn't even have to be thought about nowadays/ since like 2010/2011/ like 11 or 12 years ago/using software/hardware from the 70s/80s just isn't practical, AT ALL, / newer/modern tech/software has become affordable nowadays, for basically anyone, but yes I know companies/businesses/banks/governments want to hang on to the past, I think if they could get away with it, they would use paper/filing cabinets/stamps/the pony express vs email/servers/networks/digital calendars and so on.
I'd been in mainframe IT for 35 years. The last time my contract was cut, I decided I was done with the corporate world. I was tired of being a number in a system that a Sr VP could cut so he could earn his bonus. I now sell Viking/Medieval clothing at medieval and renaissance faires across the country. WAY harder job, lot less money, but so much more satisfying.
Wtf haha:) I like medieval clothing :)
I'm guessing you were financially secure due to your 35 years in IT in order to make that career switch. Lol
I just recently dodged a bullet with a job that looked really good on paper and that I was told flat out that I the top pick for by far - but the company axed the position days before they sent me the offer letter because upper management wanted to make their Q3 books look slightly better by not filling the position - a position I could tell just from the interview they desperately needed filled. The guy interviewing me was the only person doing the work and was extremely overloaded. It would have been a lot of fun, but given that the longest of my last 4 jobs were 1 year (they wanted me back in the office after telling me I wouldn't need to be in the office when I was hired - I resisted and they made up an excuse to fire me), 2 years (project was finished and was handed off to a team of maintainers that I had trained), 8 months (they hired me with the expectation that they could sell their services to clients and then couldn't, so I spent 75% of my time helping other people with their jobs instead of doing mine and they eventually realized they didn't have work for me and let me go) and 4 month (extremely bad fit), I'm very happy that they axed the position before I was hired and not 6 months down the line.
Now I'm working for a university IT department, which is extremely nice. I started my career working for a university and I'm so glad to be doing so again - this time I'm even covered by a union. I'm even getting paid better than I would have been at the job that fell through, and this is 100% linux/unix rather than 75%/25% Linux/Windows. It's only been a couple months and I'm mostly liking where I am - my only complaint is that they hired me at an awkward time and there's not a lot for me to do - due to vacations and such, the big projects I'll be working on are delayed and waiting on other teams - so I've had a handful of pretty small/trivial tasks. Oh, and the fucking macbook they gave me. I somehow managed to be a (mostly) Linux admin for a decade and avoid macs entirely until now and I can not stand that thing - my hatred for windows pales in comparison to my hatred for that device.
@@masaufuku1735 you can run Linux on your Mac.
Quitting IT to sell ancient looking clothes is something...
Quite a testimonial. Thank you for that.
Greetings from Portugal.
COBOL isn't just a programming language, it's a lifestyle you never truly leave 😎 lol. But honestly I wish you luck in all your endeavors :)
Thank you!! I'll never truly leave COBOL, even if I'm not working on it every day. It's like vim- it's just part of my brain now.
@@VeronicaExplainstalking is a great way to get things off/out your brain...
I suggested Podcasting via the 2.0 spec as a additional way to so just that... Like blogging its a longer form then video and can provide a different outlet for Cobol or whatever else...
Someone apparently felt my comment was spam... 1st and only spam report in the history of my account 😢
I didn't choose the z/OS life, the z/OS life chose me.
@@VeronicaExplains brr vim🙀
Veronica has time now to explain COBOL. 😅
I think the best description of COBOL was from one of my University Professors: COBOL was designed with the objective that non-technical mangers could read the programs, the result was a language that nobody could read and still be sane!
No, COBOL was there because you could hire people off the street, train them, have an analyst give them decent specifications, and they would generate acceptable code. The advantage of COBOL is that it is a restricted tool - it is pretty hard (nigh impossible) for a newbie to screw up in the ways that many a rookie C programmer does.
Static calls, no pointers and no dynamic allocation of memory in vanilla COBOL was great for financial calculations. (Most of the time. I did have to use dynamic allocation for telecom account processing for accounts that could have hundreds of thousands of calls in a day. That was the only need for it in over 20 years of COBOL programming.)
"one of my University Professors"
How many COBOL programs did that professor write?
@@bobd5119 he had worked in the banking industry as a programmer, so quite a few
@@bobd5119 Probably many unlike the web developer HTML professors today
Hello Verónica,
I'm from a small country called Uruguay in South America.
I discovered your channel a while ago, and I loved the way you communicate and explain topics.
I'm not a programmer or anything like that; I work in the field of cybersecurity. Nevertheless, all the topics you've covered on your channel have interested me.
I really like the vintage-tech style you bring to the videos.
I'm very glad that you've been able to take the step of doing what you love, because, after all, in the little time we have on this Earth, that's what we should do.
I promise to watch all the videos you upload to support making this your lifelong job.
Sending you a hug and congratulations.
Thank you for your support!
Hi. I'm your neighbor (literally).
I live in Rio Grande do Sul near Chui, the southernmost border of Brazil. Many people call those who live near this region "Brasiguaio", because Spanish is already mixed with Portuguese, and the Uruguayan Gaucho and Brazilian Gaucho culture unites the two regions of the countries into one. Now that I've made my presentation, a curiosity. I have seen a movement some time ago of many Brazilian programmers going to Uruguay. Despite Brazil having a much richer market in technology, Uruguay has made a great incentive to take programmers from here to the other side of the border. It's been working, I have two friends from São Paulo who are in Montevideo.
As an engineer slash artist that has quit jobs and not quit jobs. I applaud you. It’s always so good to see other people not waste their time and potential
How about teaching us COBOL too?
There's not a lot of high quality content about it out there, and there's definitely interest.
I'd also be interested in Ada, and nobody's doing that either.
Soon I'll be able to do so!
One of the challenges for me has always been ownership of code written. The end of the road for my active COBOL development time will facilitate more discussion! :)
@@VeronicaExplains as someone who had years of COBOL programming on non-IBM (mini/mainframe) systems, I've always wondered what your platform was and hearing that it was X86 (OpenCOBOL/GNUCobol or Micro Focus I would imagine) makes my heart leap! It's tough to find a gig out there for COBOL that's on an IBM platform hence the requirements of JCLandDB2 for most current openings. My NCR/Unisys COBOL background is good enough for standard COBOL (ANSI) and can get the job done but if one doesn't have IBM experience you're usually not considered. Excited for you and for the new content especially your COBOL history. Good luck!!
why cobol?
Amen.
@@markgreen2170 For fun? For profit? Some of us just simply like to constantly learn to stuff; we get our kicks out of learning. Some want to learn COBOL because one can make a life-long career out of it. For some, it's both.
If people truly understood how much old code is still running from 40+ years ago they'd run screaming into the night. My first job out of college in 2010 had me working at least part-time in Borland C++ with DOS, modding PASCAL libs and expanding ancient CLI-based database subscriptions that are in all likelihood still running today. None of my peers could do the work, and at the time only one part time contractor was working on those systems. The only reason I could do the work is from a young age my oldest brother had started me on Commodore64, then MS-DOS, and finally onto a Windows environment. I was born in '85, but I had the experience with systems older than I was from a very young age - never would I have guessed the advantage it would have provided for me. Great video, thank you. Best of luck with this big change.
Very cool! Changes are scary, I know! I can feel it in your speech (even you’re never saying it clearly)… and I’m very glad you’ve taken that step tho. I hope - even believe - you’re gonna be very happy with your decision. Since I’ve been following your Web content production, I can say that’s “YOU.”
Good luck, and go for it!! 🤗
Reach and help everyone you can.
Brave move Veronica. I wish you the best. You're a natural on camera and your sense of humor is fantastic. Love the blooper reel at the end.
I hope your channel grows, Veronica. 100K soon enough.
Thank you! It's been a blast so far and I'm excited for what's next!
Sorry that I had to ruin the 42 likes, but I wanted to like the comment 😅
Behind you all the way! I spent 9 years in IT working from home. Got laid off just before COVID, then made the HUGE leap to become a Middle School Engineering teacher! Best decision ever!
Good luck with your awesome journey!
What's covered in middle school engineering?
Congratulations! I know you'll continue to be a smashing success. 🙏
Oh my goodness, thank you so much!!
Cobol was my first language in College (1981 to 1985). On an IBM 4341. Then my first job at Atomic Energy of Canada, was CICS Cobol, along with JCL. Being largely an engineering company, I dabbled in PL/1 as well. I turned 60 this September and after forty years of code, I retired. The last part of my career was mostly Oracle PL/SQL. But dropping a deck of cards was painful :)
Do you know why ROWNUM in oracle slows queries a lot ?
I'm very happy for you, Veronica. I wish you all the best in your new endeavors, and I look forward to seeing more frequent videos from you in the future. 🎉
Thank you!!!
Did COBOL for 17 years then a bunch of other languages for another 15 years. I like using Linux. Typing this response on a Linux Mint operating system. I offer COBOL part time remote but I'm not doing it 40 hours a week ever again. So glad you are going back to doing what you really enjoy. I like the code and building systems and I hate being a manager and going to meetings watching people argue for an hour.
It's quite a leap to leave the stability and familiarity of a career and pursue your passion, that's very admirable and awesome! I hope I can do the same someday
I wrote COBOL 50 years ago and still do -- very lucrative.
I learned COBOL and RPG II way back in 78 in JR College, hated RPG II, LOVED COBOL, only offered a job in a small town in west Texas, turned it down after I thought about it for a week, never got the opportunity to work in COBOL, regrettably.
@@Dhannibal01 I learned COBOL and RPG II at college in ‘88/‘89. I subsequently was an RPG III analyst/programmer for almost 20 years.
Congratulations on making the difficult decison to cast off the "golden hand-cuffs" and focus on a fulltime teaching career here and other venues. I'm a long time consumer of your content and a brand new Patreon supporter. You are a talented and passionate teacher and you have my best wishes for success.
Personal note: I wrote COBOL programs on HP3000 systems for 11 years until 1991. I moved on to other programming languages and never missed leaving COBOL behind,
Well done !!! I haven't programmed in COBOL since about 1993 !! Amazing how much of that legacy stuff is still about. But follow your heart and you will never go far wrong. I quit most of my 9-5 IT admin to focus on the more important things in life (and my retro Commodores :D) ...life is really short and I wasted so many of my best years in a haze of 100+ Hour weeks.....
Great you have belief in yourself, you will do well, and I look forward to more brilliant videos :) Thank you
Congrats on the big move, Veronica. Your musicianship has always been evident, as are your talents as an educator and creator. Here's wishing great things for you!
I took my first programming class (COBOL) 43 years ago. COBOL was also my first development job. I think your making the right move. COBOL has had lasting power that other languages could only dream about. I don't know what the COBOL scene is like today but all of our applications were just batch processing and printouts. When I first started working we didn't even have monitors. We can do a lot more today but things are also more difficult today. The COBOL programmers back then had it pretty good. I wish you the best on your journey. I've just subscribed to your channel and look forward to see your clips.
More Veronica videos sounds amazing! Your upbeat approach and positive messaging are highlights to my week when you release something new.
Best of luck on the new direction!
Congratulations Veronica you are a recovering Sys Admin (with COBOL!). Stay strong, you have my support don't give in and be tempted to go back 💖
I hope you'll find time to do a "beginner to intermediate in Cobol" series, which takes us from hello world through to a simple but complete accounting application or the like, then when it does well, start a second series of two-to-three part Cobol advanced explainer videos, on those complex subjects that come up once you're past the intermediate
@@GladeSwope : COBOL isn’t hard to read. It was designed to have sentence like structure. Maybe the original programmer wasn’t a very COBOL programmer. That’s not COBOLs fault. BTW, I can code in multiple computer languages, including COBOL, but prefer Assembly Language as well.
Uhm that does not sound like a very productive use of her time really I think there are a lot of videos like that on youtube that are competing, also does her channel even focus on instruction videos cause on my first glance it's mostly odd-ware or very specific short tutorials.
In 1992 I told my dad that I hated my first programming job. It was on an IBM mainframe using COBOL and JCL. He told me to take some classes on the AS/400. I've been there ever since. I literally could have done the work of my 12 mainframe-based teammates by myself. The AS/400 was exponentially more reliable, intuitive, and faster than the mainframe. I have yet to meet a single person who has been on the iSeries who has hated it.
GO FOR IT!!!! Srsly, I believe from time to time I hit the same questioning about my relationship with ppl (comparing with fellows in the same area) and I'm happy that you found a middle ground between tech and human dynamics. I enjoy your videos a lot and, from time to time I get back to 'em if I need more info. I wish you all the best and regards from Brazil =)
I really hope you do more videos on Debian. I'm getting ready for my first forays into Linux outside of logging into a Linux server at school. Your videos on RHEL and Debian's 30th are what finally tipped the balance between Debian and Ubuntu or Fedora.
Hey Veronica, thanks for continuing this awesome work you are doing here on RUclips. It's great to see you pursue your passion and starting a new career isn't easy, but the community stands with you and we hope good things will come out for the channel.
Thank you so much for the kind words and the support!
the fuser video was the first one I saw. hope to see more content like that one! Congratulations on your decision 🎉 Wishing you all the best ❤
Thank you! I appreciate it!
I'm kind of the opposite, I enjoy staying "behind the scenes", just knowing that my work makes something else function or function better than before. I always was a little jealous of people who can do this stuff, talking to people and exposing themselves. Best wishes to you and your channel, I hope you can make it work.
Good for you, you're a pretty young COBOL programmer as the average age on them is about 60+ these days. We still run an ERP system that runs on IBM-I infrastructure (AS400 architecture). I told my daughter (Who studies Computer Science/Programming) and she loves behind the scenes stuff being an introvert, told her it would be good money if she learned COBOL :)
Awesome and congrats! Making this change can be scary for sure. You have a ton of support in retro computer and tech community. I'm super excited to see what comes next, especially with your channel and content. Now go get on with your bad self 🙂
Good luck! If you find the time, I would love to learn more about you experiences and suggestions with legacy software. I do not have to deal with Cobol, but all successful software will some day become legacy. Better be prepared.
"No body puts Baby in the corner"
I taught COBOL programming for about 20 years. Most of it is still in my brain somewhere. It would be interesting to see what changes have been made to the language. Then I found Unix and Linux, the internet happened and I switched to teaching Unix/Linux system administration until retirement. I did the COBOL on IBM 1401 and later Burroughs Medium System and IBM 4300. The Burrroughs Medium Systems were built as COBOL machines. It had some hardware instructions that made COBOL programs quite efficient. It also did decimal arithmetic in integer and floating point and even had decimal memory addressing - no hex conversion needed. Fun days.
Congrats to you. It’s always best to love what you do and who you work with. I wish you the best of luck on your journey!
I’d love to see you talk about mixing music creation and tools to facilitate it on Linux. I’m a Linux user as well as learning piano (on a digital piano) and don’t know anything about the tools Linux has to work with.
Thank you! I plan to do a bit more about music making on Linux, as it's not the focus of many of the music channels and it's definitely a *whole thing*. As someone who's been making music on Linux since around 2006 or so, there's a lot to talk about!
I find it strange that applications in C are sometimes considered legacy and some managers want them to be modernized by rewriting them in Java.
Huh, this is about the first time that yt has recommended a new channel that i am really interested in. Good luck with your decision, i will be around to watch.
Good for you!! It's so nice to see a fellow tech geek take control of their destiny and make their future their own. You are an inspiration. Be ready for the lows, they will make you doubt this decision, but you will prevail, 100%.
Thank you so much! As far as the sound on the outro, pretty sure it's my Subdecay Liquid Sunshine (overdrive pedal) going into my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. If I remember correctly, I also used a JHS 3-series distortion DI'd right into my interface for the solo part (not sponsored by any of the aforementioned brands, just like their stuff).
@@VeronicaExplains Hello! Can I listen to the whole track?
This randomly popped into my feed. I work in IT and a long time ago I heard about COBOL being a language used for old banking software and that a lot of the programmers are retiring. It sounds like a good way to make money. I hope that your new career brings you happiness! I like IT because I get to talk to people. I used to work Pest Control and I lived in Greenville, California which was a very small town in a very low populated national forest. I did it for 5 years and I became incredibly lonely since I worked alone and I was always on the road. I can relate!
it's also all over healthcare and health insurance and it's AWFUL
Scary Changes but I hope they lead to good things.
Also I could so totally see you putting out COBAL or other videos even if it was a training series behind patreon or kofi or something? I'm not much into programming but I do want to learn a little to do things at home.
I picked up 2 shirts from your merch store to help out :). Hopeful it helps you out a bit during your break.
60-hour workweeks are tough to do for a three-month stretch.
Years ago, the jobs I had required me to do this for three or four years. I got SO burned out from it, that I haven't worked in years--not since 2009. This is aside from an occasional temp job that lasted for just a few days, here and there.
Best of luck to you.
My understanding (as a Canadian) is if you don't have a "traditional" job in America, health insurance is extremely expensive (e.g. COBRA). Given how small this channel is (for now), how much of a hit will health insurance be to your finances?
I don't want to get too into the weeds publicly here, other than to say that our health insurance in the United States is pretty awful, and I'm lucky to have coverage through another member of the household at present.
@@VeronicaExplains Awful is an understatement. I had to go to the emergency room a week after I was laid off from my job and the bill came in just under $20k, yep, count it $20,000. Healthcare is definitely a concern for my next steps too.
wow, I’ve never seen x86 cobol. Only on big iron, mainframe.
COBRA is the most expensive way to buy insurance. Individuals have the ability to buy direct from the insurers, which does cut the cost pretty dramatically. I'm a contract-for-hire worker, paying my own insurance every month, and it's doable.
@@fivevs1 I suspect most COBOL code today is running in an emulated "Big Iron" environment.
I saw this happen 20 years ago, pushed by a "Big Iron" purveyor themselves (Unisys).
Back when I was a young teenager, maybe in 1998 or so, I did a programming course at night. There was an introduction to COBOL as part of the course but the instructor told me I didn't need to turn up because by the time I was old enough to work in the area, nobody would use COBOL anymore. A quarter of a century later...
Keep up these awesome videos!
Thank you so much!!!!
As a new viewer who loves your “Miss Frizzle meets Bill Nye Approach” and your intro music, I’m excited to see you more out in front doing the explains 🖖🏼🤙🏼
I wonder (have been for a little while) what's the story behind the COBOL gigs. How did somebody get into that in modern times?
Oh, once the dust has settled and the servers are offline and the work is in the rear view, I'm sure I'll talk about it.
Last year, we had interns who learned it from two senior developers, and most of them stayed with it.
@@VeronicaExplains Please do.
You are one of my favorite channels and I am happy to see you move to new endeavors. I look forward to your content :-)
would love to hear a little more about working in cobol, do you all commit stuff to git, are there unit tests and code reviews? theres testing environments too im guessing? how often is code pushed?
Ooooo, I'd love to cover all of that at some point.
I've seen a lot of COBOL using bespoke versioning such as renaming an old file from FILE.CBL to FILE.CBL.BAK_YYMMDD, that sort of thing. That's mostly for less maintained codebases, though- I often script out a conversion to git for those and then use git going forward.
Proper unit tests aren't baked into any of the projects I work on but I fake it out with compiler tests- as I compile a program I script out some additional tests to make sure the data does what I expect it to (essentially "test-driven development"). My guess is that some compilers or runtimes might even allow some sort of unit testing, but licensing has always been trouble at my small scale. Larger teams probably have a much easier time building proper tests.
I so understand. IT was my dream as a teenager and work for decades. Today im only have it as a hobby. Sometimes I still end up doing those 16 h days but sometimes I have a few days totally off and just do my other hobbies. I do my blog on IT regularly and test new apps regularly, except for the summer when my other hobbies take most of my time. IT is for me like a condition not an illness.
I hope you find yourself in a happier place.
Veronica, I think you quit your gig, rather than COBOL.
Legacy systems transitions is something I've had a fascination with for ages... Very fascinating talk. I didn't know what any of the terms were called...
I thought cobol devs have pop star wages :)
That's what I heard too
If you want to get into it, it's pretty straight forward. It's a much smaller learning curve than a lot of other languages because, while archaic, it was intended for a particular use case and isn't the swiss army knife that things like C, C++, Perl and Python became.
For Y2K you got to determine your own salary.
If you can read english, you can write cobol.
Oh, the money is great. Someone asked me what I'll miss about COBOL day-to-day, and I definitely said "getting paid to do COBOL."
Stable contracts, good pay, reasonably predictable work. It has a ton of advantages.
More power to you!
Old employers not calling you after you quit COBOL development? I still get development emails and text from inside my department and I have not actively coded in decades.
Good that you are doing what you enjoy, my the force be with you. You might want to consider getting a sponsor if you are willing, it seems to be a stable supplement.
I could never do what you do, I enjoy being behind the scenes and not having to deal with people directly for the most part.
wow haven't heard the word 'cobol' in so long...I started in IT in '78 in operations hanging tapes, printing reports on impact printers, bursting reports, moved to systems, programming in COBOL on Honeywell Mainframe , moved on to DBA role and then as a consultant in data base conversion and data architect for last 35 years....been a great career..good timing and some luck.
I used to work in Computer repair in the era of the 486 to Pentium II. The shop that I worked out of also sold used computers mostly 286s. These computers were very old even in those days, but they had basic games and word processing on them. Nobody wanted to work on those computers, except for one guy, but that guy made bank, and those computers easily made us as much money as our new computer sales. There's always money in Legacy systems!
I heard something interesting on the Tim Ferriss podcast recently… He says that he only does gigs for either free because he loves the idea so much or the paycheck has to be the biggest paycheck he's ever gotten in his life.
Something to consider, good luck!
Congratulaions! I also left teaching music last year to pursue my IT business full time.
I'm a retired software engineer and consultant. There are so many stories to tell. Many of us have the same stories of corporate politics, narcissistic manners, and crazy group dynamics. On the subject of COBOL, it's actually a very efficient language designed for very slick conversion into compact machine code without the need of a runtime interpreter. For preparing bare-bones reports, it's excellent. I didn't do a lot of COBOL, but when I did, it felt like running assembler code on a mainframe -- super fast and so simple not much could mysteriously go wrong.
I have only just today found your channel, and I'm in love. sorry, not like that. I love your enthusiasm and excitement about the dull nerdy crap I like. I really hope you do find your place at the front. this video, in particular, brought a lump to my throat. you're starting a new chapter, and it looks like your future is bright! I guess I'm going to have to add yet another Patreon payout to my list!
My first ever IT gig was writing COBOL for a telecom billing system. System was an IBM3790 controlled by JCL.. DB2. DB. It had a robotic silo that would load the tapes. I loved that job..
At the start of my career I was a COBOL developer, but they would not let me do C on Linux, so I had to quit that job and I became a ... windows engineer and C# developer, then trainer and architect, and I felt very happy about the change: congrats, have a lot of fun teaching, that is the nicest job possible!
Hi Veronica. Just wanted to say good luck with whatever you do in the future. It's a bold and scary decision to quit your job - I know, I did just that exactly 1 year ago. Like you I worked on legacy systems that are still in use by my old employer, based on the Centura development IDE that was popular with many UK financial companies in the 1990's. I quit because they no longer appreciated the skills that I have. In the last year I have taken a career break to do some home improvement projects and to think about my future career path. I'm also of an age that it would be possible for me to stop full time employment and take retirement. Even so, I'm still looking out for new work - maybe something will turn up.
PS. I learnt COBOL at college along with FORTRAN and other languages :-)
Ah, souvenirs. My first job after graduation in the late 80s was to revamp COBOL programs from the 60s. I remember the flow chats drawn on tracing paper so brittle they were veeery difficult to unfold, and the orange monitor of the giganormous Bull DPS9000 running GCOS 7. I've left the field for years, but indeed, this was fun.
Good luck. With your COBOL experience and admin experience, you may want to see about doing some temporary work as a stop gap until your channel goes into full swing. Best wishes -- fellow programmer also tired of the 6am Monday crisis scenarios.
Veronica, congrats! ironically, I just did the exact opposite! After 34 years in IT, with the last 15 being on the front lines supporting users, I decided to take a left turn and move to RPG/ILE programming on an IBM i platform! I can't wait.
Honestly, I don't know how you did it. Yes, legacy is a stable job with good pay. I specialized in pre-OSX Mac, AS/400, and Cobol. But when a company would modernize, I would have to start over, and it got tiring. I, however, was not lucky enough to have a fairly popular RUclips channel, so I just moved into being a Mac system administrator, something I already did in addition. Good luck on your transition. Love your channel!
Gosh! I left COBOL and Fortran in the late 90s and never looked back. I think you'll do well in your future endeavors.
I think a good strat is to make cobol shorts to lure people in with shiny graphics. 😂 but thanks Veronica dope to see you teaching and taking a break. Working with legacy systems was hell, but they're not going away anytime soon.
Hi, Veronica. Since the first time I watched your video, I like how you communicate your ideas, how you talk. It feels like you are blessed with your voice.
And my random thought imagine that you are being a podcaster or interviewer who talks a lot about tech 😄.
As a junior web developer I am glad to see people are still employed with these old technologies. People get so scared when new tech comes out thinking that everyone will lose their jobs when its just not the case
I knew i never wanted to touch COBOL again after my one and only class in it waay back when I was getting my CS degree 35 years ago. Bless your courage!!
I am sure this change will bring you back all alive and refreshed, have a good break, rest well and listen to your inner voice. I will be waiting for your videos
Congrats! Looking forward to seeing what you do in your next adventure. You got this!
Thank you, you gave me the perspective to be hiding behind the scenes... I'll start soon a channel too. You gave me the inspiration...
As a fellow sys admin and jealous new subscriber you are living the dream. Can’t wait to see what you put up.
Thank you!!!
I'm a "behind the scenes" data engineer. But I can totally understand your goals, your true self. Thanks for having the courage to make such a big change.
I studied computer science at college using COBOL and since then I've had to use it professionally exactly 0 times. This is a good thing because the worst of times would have been so much worse had COBOL been involved. Good luck with VE on the YouToobs, I'll be tuning in from time to time.
You absolutely deserve to feel stoked for this new chapter in life. And I'm stoked too, to see what you want to show us next :)
Time to do some Linux tier lists for extra exposure :D Good luck! Having just started a new job a year ago, it's rough.
Yay, I'm excited. \o/ More videos. Brave move, I wish you all the luck
I'm amazed at how you've made it this far. There were 2.5 years in my life when I developed banking systems. The technology wasn't very old, maybe 6-7 years old, but it bothered me that the tech world was running past me. I quit after 2.5 years.
You're a great teacher and I'm confident you're gonna teach us tons of more stuff! Congrats on this new stage of life
Met a COBOL dev bloke after I was working in IT for [charity case] _BMW Porsche_ [corrupt] _VW Suzuki JCB Hyundai_ and they terminated me with pneumonia - now UK excess "won't be *programming* the thermostat any more" is 10,000s a quarter
WOOOT!!! ❤❤❤ AWESOME! You being you without the distraction will ROCK. (I thought the channel was your full-time gig because your videos are so good) A star shines on the hour of this decision! 😊
Lol, nice Sim City 2000 reference. Find difficult to understand, as you had my dream job and dealing with people day to day would be my nightmare, but if you love it so much that is awesome! I can still remember my coding lecturer at college, he is awesome.
I don't know why. First video I see from you. But you put a smile on my face and I can't wait to see more of it :3
Stay strong Linux Mom 💪! I love your work, your charisma and passion for software and hardware. I've learnt a lot from you and I really appreciate it. You're one of my favorite you-tubers from all web. I hope you could accomplish your goals. Greetings from Argentina.
Thank you!!
This is the first of your videos to pop up in my feed, and you can count me as a new subscriber; I hope it helps in some small way. My software career began with COBOL and FORTRAN back when they were current languages. I’m semi-retired now, and am familiar with the feeling that the position you’re in just isn’t right for you. I admire your courage, confidence and self-awareness and hope you find a path that suits you!
Best of luck! 😊
When I started my current job the plan was to leave our mainframe (COBOL + assembly) the next 5 years. People around it said ten years. Well, it took 15 and honestly I'd say they are not done yet. Some of the code that came out of that, especially related to hierarchical databases, is just mindblowingly stupid. It's not bad code per se - they just didn't deal with the database model really well...
What I am saying is, don't be surprised if you get a call for some "short time" consulting. We had to pay a third party company to stay in business for more than 15 years instead of retiring... At least there was another company using the same product...
They made me learn COBOL in college, back in the 80's. Haven't touched it since. Surprised it's still around.
Wow, I escaped CICS, COBOL, Telon, IMS in the early 90s, and have lost count of how many programming and scripting languages I have used in my career since then. I still get job offers for COBOL work in overseas locations, so there's still a lot of important legacy code working out there! New sub, as I am a recent Linux convert, always learning.
Hi. Just subscribed to you. . I started out with Fortran and COBOL in the mid 70’s. I’m retired now after going through a Unix/c language phase. I ended up in QA after the power that be sent so many of the coding jobs offshore. I’m praying for you, girl
Happy to be a new subscriber, these videos bring me joy and remind me of my past. I appreciate how articulate you are, thanks for bringing us along for the ride. 😎
please teach us COBAL..I was a system admin but iIquit that job way before iIwas a professional. Now iIwaminterested in that profession again because of you.
Lesson zero: It's spelled COBOL. For COmmon Businiess-Oriented Language. Courtesy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper.
No need to meet people, talk to people, teach people? Perfect job! =) Subscribed, looking forward to hear the speaking videos.
I'm looking at starting a new career myself, and I've wanted to learn how to code for a long time. I've never thought about legacy systems before. Your "I'm quitting" video might have just sparked a new start for me ngl. A new career with job stability sounds amazing.
I love your videos Veronica, wish all the best for you
All the best to you!! Takes a lot of guts and you must have done some real soul searching. You seem a great deal happier :) x
Hey Veronica , congratulations on following your heart!! Your way of explaining things it is one of the kind! The world needs more people like you
COBOL was the first language that I learnt back in '93. Very fast for batch jobs and very artistic! I actually wrote a COBOL program generator in C to cut down on writing code. What days!!