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survey. I

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got really nervous. I

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was trying to banter.

0:48

In terms of when you ask

0:50

how widespread it is, there

0:52

are somewhere on the order

0:55

of three digit billions

0:57

of lines of COBOL source

0:59

code in production right now in

1:01

the world.

1:01

Common business

1:04

oriented language or COBOL

1:07

has been around since the 1960s. It

1:09

underpins a lot of the technology

1:11

we use every day.

1:12

Virtually every

1:15

credit card transaction, every

1:17

ATM transaction, because

1:19

that's what the bank has,

1:23

that that ATM transaction eventually

1:26

connects to everything

1:28

from, you know, printing your statement every month

1:30

or making a PDF of it for

1:32

you to download to just all

1:35

the routine business that takes place.

1:38

If you work in IT, you may

1:40

already know the history of COBOL, its

1:43

mass adoption over time and its prevalence.

1:46

But what's behind its staying power?

1:49

And with all the different newer programming

1:51

languages out there,

1:53

should we still be learning it?

2:02

This is Compiler, an original

2:04

podcast from Red Hat. I'm Brent Simenow.

2:07

And I'm Angela Andrews. We go

2:09

beyond the buzzwords in jargon and

2:12

simplify tech topics.

2:18

Today we're talking about COBOL.

2:21

Let's kick it to producer Kim Wong. She's

2:23

ready to get us started. For

2:26

this episode, I spoke with two people,

2:28

Scott Sperlak, who you just heard,

2:31

and Jesus Ferre.

2:33

Scott is a software engineer

2:35

at IBM. My background

2:37

has been almost entirely

2:40

software engineering. And COBOL

2:43

on the mainframe has been the bulk

2:45

of it. But other platforms,

2:48

other languages too.

2:49

He specializes in legacy modernization

2:52

and mainframes. Mainframes

2:54

are large servers built for processing

2:57

large amounts of data. To understand

2:59

COBOL and its long history, you

3:01

need to understand the mainframe, where the

3:04

programming language lives.

3:06

COBOL does what it was designed to

3:08

do. It is not producing

3:11

video graphics. It's not exciting.

3:14

It is designed

3:16

to crunch massive numbers

3:19

of huge values very

3:22

quickly, very accurately, very securely,

3:25

and economically at the same

3:27

time.

3:28

That's right. These mainframes

3:31

are built to process data for the purposes

3:33

of transactions and a wide variety

3:35

of them.

3:36

So in the 1960s,

3:39

what we know as the technology was still

3:41

coming together, this was

3:44

revolutionary for a lot of reasons.

3:47

I spoke with Jesus to find out more. He's

3:50

a distinguished engineer and the

3:52

CTO of global banking for IBM's

3:54

consulting arm. He's based

3:57

in Madrid. When COBOL was created,

3:59

the mainframe The main

4:00

type of processing was batch processing.

4:03

And for that, COBOL is

4:05

super fantastic.

4:07

So on the mainframe, batch

4:09

processing, where software runs

4:12

different jobs and groups

4:14

or batches, think like very

4:17

high volume of repetitive tasks,

4:19

like

4:20

deposits and debits in a person's bank

4:22

account, for example. Common

4:24

business processes that take place all

4:27

the time.

4:27

The bank were one of the first

4:30

adopting IT technology for

4:33

automation of

4:35

the back office processes in

4:37

the 50s and in the 60s. And still

4:39

many of the systems are running because

4:42

they are a good performer. They

4:45

have a very good functional quality.

4:48

And they are very secure.

4:52

They would have to be secure because COBOL

4:54

was created by the US government under

4:57

a mandate for the creation of

4:59

a common business language. A bunch

5:01

of people got together. You

5:03

might recognize a name or two in there. If

5:05

you look up the history online, Grace Hopper. A

5:08

lot of these great minds got together

5:10

and wanted to build a common

5:13

business language for both

5:15

governmental organizations and also private

5:18

companies to kind of be able to build

5:20

things that were in that same kind

5:22

of language. Everybody could understand what everybody was

5:24

doing, right? The thing is COBOL

5:26

was only supposed to exist as a stack

5:29

gap, a temporary solution until

5:31

another agreed upon language was created.

5:35

But

5:36

that temporary solution allowed

5:38

portability of programs. It was

5:40

very easily understood and therefore easily

5:43

adopted by developers. And

5:45

when computer manufacturers started building

5:48

compilers for COBOL, it

5:50

saw mass adoption. So

5:53

COBOL over time became

5:55

the programming language of banking

5:58

for the entire world.

6:01

But why though? There's other programming

6:03

languages out there. You know, this was supposed

6:05

to be just a temporary solution. Why

6:07

did COBOL become so popular?

6:09

The B on

6:11

COBOL, B is from business,

6:14

you know, is very oriented to business.

6:16

And two, the thing that banks need,

6:19

like automatic calculation, you

6:21

know, store and recover data, is very

6:23

efficient to doing that, you know, and

6:25

also was by then a language

6:28

that in some way was resembling to

6:30

English, you know.

6:32

Most programmers back then

6:35

working on a mainframe didn't

6:37

have a computer science degree, because

6:40

they didn't really exist yet, at least not

6:42

the way they exist today, right? Yeah.

6:45

So the syntax for a common business

6:48

language had to be easy

6:50

for everyone to learn. COBOL

6:52

delivered on that. And after

6:54

a while, it wasn't just within the banking industry

6:57

where one could find COBOL.

6:59

And so that probably was the reason that

7:01

COBOL has this long history of engagement

7:05

with banking. But I mean, other industries

7:07

like insurance or healthcare

7:10

or transportation that start by

7:13

then also to implement information system

7:15

we are using as well. Remember,

7:16

this is transactional data. So think about

7:18

all those different transactions

7:21

you make over the course of a single day, buying

7:23

a plane ticket, that's COBOL, buying

7:26

a ticket on the train to go to

7:29

work every day, that's probably

7:31

COBOL. If you are going

7:33

online and checking your benefits, when you're

7:36

looking at your health insurance, COBOL again,

7:39

it was revolutionary and incredibly

7:41

efficient for the time.

7:44

Business have passed. It's

7:46

been a while since the 1960s. And

7:49

COBOL's popularity has lain. And

7:51

some say its relevance has too.

7:53

Jesus has some ideas

7:56

as to why that is.

7:58

Maybe you can remind this.

7:59

black and green screen, you know,

8:02

that now evolve to new user

8:04

interfaces that for that is

8:07

not the most suitable programming

8:09

language. Okay.

8:10

It's that black and green screen,

8:12

you know, like the matrix kind of you

8:15

remember the movie The Matrix that has like the green

8:17

letters on the black. That's what COBOL

8:19

looks like. And it's kind of the

8:21

purest form if we're talking about people who are working

8:23

directly on these mainframes. CRT

8:26

screens. Is that what they're called?

8:27

I think so. Yeah. Okay. There's

8:29

more to the story, though. I can't

8:31

get agreement on an exact

8:34

number, but most industry

8:36

experts I've talked to for this episode

8:38

put the average age of the COBOL

8:41

programmer at 53.

8:43

That

8:45

is a little higher than I would expect a, you

8:47

know, a programmer

8:49

to

8:50

handle giving the eyes. I

8:53

want to hear what you're about to say. I'm

8:57

going to stay out of this.

9:00

I'm

9:04

going to say that is a higher

9:07

that is an higher average than I was

9:09

expecting average than

9:12

I was expecting.

9:15

Emphasis on average. Okay.

9:18

Duly noted.

9:21

It has

9:24

gotten to the point, though, where

9:26

larger companies and government

9:28

organizations are starting to sound the

9:31

alarm. The adopter

9:33

base used to be sprawling.

9:36

It's now dwindled. Specialists

9:38

are aging out of the workforce and

9:40

the community around COBOL

9:43

is disappearing.

9:45

A run of other programming languages,

9:48

there are more, let me say,

9:50

vivid or active ecosystems.

9:53

And that ecosystem does not exist so

9:56

much in COBOL.

9:59

Some people make the argument that this

10:02

was a long time coming. After

10:04

all, COBOL wasn't supposed to be permanent

10:07

anyway. Oh

10:07

yeah.

10:08

And it's time for the tech industry to move on

10:10

with something new. Newer languages, newer

10:13

interfaces, newer development environments.

10:16

But here's the rub. This is all

10:18

coming at a time where there is an unprecedented

10:21

push for modernization. Whether

10:24

it's the Internal Revenue Service here in the States, or

10:26

the National Healthcare System, or NHS,

10:29

in the UK, governments are trying

10:32

really hard to move their legacy

10:34

systems to the latest and greatest. At

10:36

the same time, and this is no surprise

10:39

to you, Brent, or you, Angela,

10:42

migration work isn't simple, nor

10:45

is it cheap. No ma'am. So

10:47

sometimes, decision makers are

10:50

caught between building for the future and

10:52

maintaining what's still running.

10:54

Angela, can you talk us

10:57

through what exactly makes this

10:59

challenging and expensive?

11:02

Well, if we're looking at how

11:05

efficient

11:06

a program is, or the

11:08

hardware that it's running on, or its

11:11

ability to be portable, if

11:13

it's lacking where I can't

11:15

run it,

11:16

but only on this particular piece of hardware,

11:19

or it's not scalable, or

11:21

it requires this really

11:24

high level of understanding and specialized

11:27

skill set to be able to write

11:29

new features, to maintain it, to do

11:32

all those things, it becomes

11:34

very expensive when there is not

11:36

this community around it that's

11:39

not rallying for it. I think the reason

11:41

a lot of people get into

11:44

specific programming languages is because

11:46

the communities are so vibrant and

11:51

so vocal, and you don't hear that

11:53

about COBOL. So people aren't flocking

11:56

to become COBOL

11:58

programmers. So that's why you say that. average

12:00

age is 53 years old because anyone

12:03

who's trying to learn how to code is

12:05

not looking for COBOL as

12:07

their first language. They're going to be looking for

12:09

stuff, the new hotness, like what is everyone

12:12

else talking about? You know, so that's

12:15

really a huge part of it. It's lack

12:17

of portability, it's lack of scalability,

12:19

it's lack of, you know, subject

12:22

matter experts. You can't continue

12:24

down this pipe because technology is

12:26

going in the direction

12:27

of microservices, smaller,

12:30

modular.

12:31

This is the exact opposite of that.

12:33

Exactly. And this is kind of a theme

12:36

that I'm sensing in this series

12:38

is there's a little bit of a conflict,

12:41

right, or a tension there between the

12:44

newness and the oldness. Mm-hmm.

12:47

Yeah, yeah, it is. I

12:49

can't explain it. I think they're

12:51

saying that this language was a temporary

12:54

fix for some issue that was

12:56

happening, you know, back in the day. And

12:59

apparently, it solved

13:02

that issue so well that

13:04

it basically became a standard

13:06

for business programming. And

13:09

that's not a small feat

13:11

to become so prevalent in such

13:14

a huge part of so many transactional

13:17

verticals, be it banking or healthcare,

13:20

that's no small feat. So I get

13:22

it, it's so embedded. But how

13:24

do we remove

13:26

that? How do we move from COBOL

13:29

to, say, a Python or COBOL

13:31

to a JavaScript or COBOL

13:34

to Springbud? Like, how

13:36

do we do these things? And that's

13:39

probably where the

13:42

migration issue is coming.

13:44

How do you go from COBOL to

13:47

any modern programming language? Especially

13:50

in industries like, for example,

13:52

travel, transportation, and banking,

13:55

where the amount of transactions that

13:57

are going on are constant all

13:59

over. over the world all at once,

14:01

like within like, you know, seconds,

14:03

there's like,

14:04

thousands upon thousands upon thousands

14:07

of transactions going on. And then you tell

14:09

this company, well, we're gonna migrate

14:12

away from like, cobalt, and from

14:14

this, this language and this kind of

14:16

like, system that already works and does the job well,

14:19

to this new thing. But that requires downtime.

14:22

Can you imagine telling

14:24

a company that you're gonna have some downtime

14:26

people that are trying to buy plane tickets just aren't

14:28

going to be able to buy them for like, I don't know, a few

14:31

hours, that's not a

14:33

conversation that I'd like to have with someone. Yeah.

14:35

And, you know, we talk about this

14:38

thing happens in modern

14:40

application development, blue-green deployments,

14:43

where you're, you're running something, you know,

14:46

that's a little bit older, you have this new

14:48

deployment that has this new feature set and whatever,

14:50

and you can have some workloads

14:53

moving in one direction, you can, you know, drop

14:56

some traffic from going to one deployment,

14:59

test it out, see how it goes, like, that

15:03

is where we would like to see something

15:05

like this. But where is the blue-green

15:07

deployments in cobalt? How would

15:09

you do something like this? There?

15:12

We can't have downtime. We can't have downtime

15:14

in healthcare and airlines and

15:17

because the world would stop.

15:20

So it's clear why cobalt became

15:23

so prominent, but things have changed

15:25

in it. Dramatically, there

15:27

are other languages and other hardware

15:30

capabilities beyond the mainframe.

15:33

With all of this in mind, is cobalt

15:35

still worth learning? We'll discuss

15:37

that.

15:45

Application development or development as a whole is

15:47

it's not an individual sport, it's a team

15:49

sport.

15:59

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16:55

At first, I wanted to know how

16:57

hard is it to learn COBOL?

17:00

According to Hey Zeus, it isn't so

17:02

rough. And that's by design.

17:05

Remember, COBOL came along at a time where

17:07

programmers didn't necessarily have a formal

17:10

education in their profession. Now,

17:12

that's interesting you say that because my

17:14

mom started learning COBOL in college.

17:17

Wow. Yes. And she

17:20

said back in 78, she

17:22

remembered programming in COBOL.

17:26

And her analogy was it's just like writing

17:28

a love letter. You say what you mean, and

17:30

that's it. You know, it's very

17:32

clear, very concise. And

17:35

she also said something that I thought was hysterical,

17:38

because if you ever met my mom, this sounds like

17:40

something she would say. Apparently,

17:42

she was like, you know, when you're in programming class

17:44

and you're writing notes or whatever. And,

17:47

you know, my mom, she's a pretty smart cookie, right?

17:50

People would always want to get her answers

17:52

or look at her code and do like this and

17:54

do like that. And so my mom, she

17:57

said she would like write notes. And

18:00

then she would like make wrong notes, like,

18:02

this is not the right thing, but I'm going to write them anyway.

18:05

And then after class, she would like throw them in the trash.

18:08

And because she knew someone probably was going

18:10

to like pick out her notes because she was smart.

18:13

People were always asking her questions. And she would just,

18:15

you know, she laughed uncontrollably

18:18

reciting this

18:19

story. So mom, if you're listening,

18:22

you can laugh some more because

18:24

I was like, Oh my God, why is she still laughing?

18:27

What? What? My

18:30

mom is is definitely the prankster. So

18:33

when you're talking about it being an easy

18:35

language, you know, she's I'm not sure

18:37

what year of college she's was in. But you know,

18:39

it came along and she said, it's like writing

18:41

a love letter. It's just clear and

18:43

concise and

18:45

to the point.

18:46

That's really interesting, especially considering

18:48

that Colwell isn't taught in

18:50

universities that much anymore. It's

18:53

certainly like not like an entire class. I'm

18:55

going to bring back Scott. He's saying the

18:57

same thing.

18:58

Cobol ceased to

19:00

be taught in colleges

19:03

about the time my career was starting

19:05

in the mid eighties. And

19:08

I wound up learning it in a technical

19:10

college after I graduated from

19:12

a four year college.

19:14

Angela, what's your experience

19:16

with Cobol? Like, did you learn it during

19:19

your education?

19:20

I need to know who wrote that prompt.

19:22

How

19:26

old do you think I am? It was very.

19:30

Hey,

19:30

listen, my husband is 43

19:34

and he he had

19:36

at least one, I think one class

19:38

where they part of the class they taught him Cobol

19:41

and he just graduated this year. So what

19:43

is not it's not not

19:46

a not a reference to Adrian. It's

19:49

just an honest question of like

19:51

what your experience of Cobol

19:52

is. For the record, 53,

19:55

I think quite young, quite young.

20:00

trying to recover. He's crying

20:02

himself out of that hole.

20:06

No, my

20:07

experience with COBOL is that I've

20:09

never written anything in COBOL

20:12

other than maybe as a kid, because

20:14

I was so inquisitive reading my mom's

20:16

note, I read everything when I was a kid.

20:19

Also, when I was in college, we just learned

20:21

that

20:22

COBOL was some language. And, you know,

20:24

that's what we learned

20:27

about it. We learned what it was, what it wasn't, and where

20:29

it came from, and the

20:32

history of it, but nothing

20:34

to the extent of, let's write some

20:36

COBOL code. Never. That hasn't

20:39

happened for me.

20:43

There is this perception, kind

20:46

of, to your point, Angela, of

20:48

COBOL just being something you read about

20:50

in a history book. In technology,

20:53

newer can be conflated with better,

20:55

and with the abundance of different languages

20:58

that IP professionals can and do

21:00

choose to learn, something as

21:03

venerated as COBOL can suffer

21:05

from an image

21:06

problem. Here's Scott again. I

21:09

think there's a great deal of misperception

21:11

in that. In the first place, if you're going to call something

21:14

outdated and a dinosaur,

21:16

tell me why. Provide

21:19

the specifics, support your argument

21:21

logically. And if

21:23

what you're doing in the

21:26

language is the same thing every other language

21:28

does, you set variables

21:31

to values. Okay, what's outdated?

21:33

What's antiquated about that?

21:35

And I, oh,

21:37

right. Exactly.

21:40

Yeah. Yeah. Like

21:42

drop.

21:43

Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yes.

21:47

That was a great response. It was

21:49

how do you, like, how do you feel about it? I mean,

21:51

it does its job

21:54

and it does its job apparently very well,

21:56

so much so that these important

21:58

systems are still used. I mean,

22:01

we know it's difficult to move away from it, but

22:03

it does its job very

22:06

well. And you can't take

22:08

that away from the language. The

22:10

fact that it's outdated, well,

22:13

it's in use right now.

22:16

What exactly makes it outdated? Because

22:18

no one's teaching it in college, maybe

22:20

because people who know the language

22:22

are actually working professionals and

22:24

not teaching. Like, there's a lot of reasons.

22:27

It's not the new flashy thing. Again,

22:29

it doesn't have that huge community around

22:32

it. You don't hear – maybe it doesn't

22:34

have a subreddit. I don't know. No, it definitely has a subreddit.

22:38

But to your point, it does

22:40

the same thing every language does.

22:43

Full stop. And you

22:45

really can't argue with that.

22:48

If the popularity is the litmus test,

22:51

then we know that that is not a

22:53

good test to compare anything.

22:57

But

22:57

there is a struggle out there

22:59

to find COBOL programmers. So

23:02

I feel like there's some kind

23:04

of piece of the puzzle that's missing for a lot

23:06

of people.

23:08

I asked Scott and Jesus

23:11

how interest in COBOL can be

23:13

fostered. Scott is

23:15

taking a proactive role. He actually

23:18

trains people who are interested in learning

23:20

COBOL.

23:20

I honestly

23:24

believe that a cohort

23:27

of young people, younger people,

23:29

20s, who write

23:32

software because they love software,

23:35

would have an absolute blast with

23:37

it.

23:39

That's interesting. It is very interesting.

23:41

I found Scott through

23:44

a bunch of boards that

23:46

were created by a couple

23:49

of different organizations, including IBM,

23:52

to foster more interest in COBOL

23:54

and to get more programmers

23:56

interested in learning COBOL. who

24:00

was very vocal about his experiences.

24:03

What is the job market like for like a cobalt

24:06

programmer today?

24:07

If every person

24:09

I've talked to not just Scott says the same thing.

24:12

If

24:13

you know cobalt you'll never not

24:15

have a job. That's where the money

24:17

resides. Okay. Well that is

24:19

so interesting because you

24:22

know you think about what's old is

24:24

new again for so many different

24:26

things. I mean fashion

24:29

and hairstyles and television

24:31

shows. There's always this resurgence

24:34

of something that comes along that younger people

24:36

can gravitate toward. I think

24:39

cobalt has a marketing

24:40

issue.

24:42

Absolutely. We need to figure out

24:44

how to better market. There is

24:47

definitely space for better

24:49

marketability and better innovation.

24:52

Scott says a community could

24:54

coalesce around cobalt

24:56

and bring in newer ideas, new

24:59

interfaces for people to work on

25:01

or new development environments for cobalt.

25:04

What the developers are seeing is no

25:06

longer that horrible 24 by 80 green

25:10

on black screen that

25:12

we associate with old-school mainframe.

25:17

That could help build a new

25:20

generation of practitioners.

25:22

I'm all for it. I mean I think we need

25:24

to get Scott in the room with

25:27

some of these popular dev rel types

25:30

who are building these online

25:32

cohorts of boot camps for people

25:34

to learn how to code and getting

25:36

them in there and again building

25:38

a community around how amazing

25:41

cobalt is and has been for so

25:43

many years. Scott is on to something

25:46

and again if he markets this well

25:49

or gets a good marketing team around I

25:51

could see cobalt coming

25:53

into the next couple

25:55

of years as an up-and-coming programming

25:58

language for new folks.

26:00

If you told me that I could get a job

26:02

get paid a really good amount of money

26:05

for Writing

26:07

the equivalent of a love letter. Mm-hmm.

26:10

I'm in

26:11

but you know what mom come on out of retirement

26:15

Okay, I Mean

26:17

why not because it

26:19

sounds as if that there are plenty

26:21

of jobs out here that would

26:24

be willing to Provide

26:26

this service again if you're talking about the

26:28

folks aging out That's with any

26:31

profession like you need to bring people in

26:34

To help innovate and to help pull

26:36

this along because it doesn't look like

26:38

it's going anywhere

26:39

And it seems like there's something like in listening

26:41

to what Scott was saying and then also Hearing

26:44

about how your mom described it Angela. There's something

26:46

that feels very it's gonna sound a little strange

26:49

But a little poetic or human

26:51

or like just something that's like really enjoyable enjoyable

26:53

about the language Like

26:56

in writing it like the syntax.

26:57

There's nothing better

27:00

than writing

27:01

a syntactically beautiful

27:03

language where Where I

27:05

said what I said, I'm putting it in code This

27:08

is exactly what I mean and it runs

27:11

like that We would all

27:13

be so lucky right to learn a programming

27:15

language That is as forgiving

27:18

and maybe forgiving is not the right word,

27:20

but very Descript this

27:22

is what I want to do. There's there's

27:25

little room for you know nuance and

27:28

Could be that you know this seems

27:31

like one of those things where this is

27:33

what I'm typing And this is exactly what I mean

27:35

like there's less room for error

27:37

in that in that way. Absolutely

27:41

Let's do it

27:45

Scott and Jesus shared

27:47

with me what they learned over

27:49

the course of their careers About

27:52

legacy languages like cobalt compared

27:54

to newer ones over the years.

27:57

We have seen a lot of innocent

27:59

babies thrown out with the bathwater

28:02

because somebody came along with a

28:04

newer, prettier bathtub that

28:07

they wanted to sell. It is not

28:09

a matter of, and you know,

28:12

and because I've done both, I

28:14

don't see one as superior to

28:16

the other.

28:18

And talking about the beauty of Syntax,

28:21

Jesus says what he

28:23

appreciates the most about programming

28:26

languages is their beauty.

28:28

And whether they're old or they're

28:31

new, it's wonderful when they're suited

28:33

to the work involved.

28:35

One of the beauty, I think that I

28:38

can say that the foreign language has some

28:41

beauty, is that it's simple

28:43

at the end, you know. And when the things

28:46

that are simple, you know, it's more

28:48

difficult when you avoid complexity,

28:51

you know, more richer than the couple

28:53

in terms of the feature

28:55

that you have to create, that

28:58

complexity also can open the door to

29:00

security breaches. The system is

29:02

still there after, in

29:04

many cases, 20, 30, 40 years, because

29:05

they are

29:08

doing the work quite well, you know. That

29:11

summed it up very well. I mean,

29:13

what technology can

29:15

you think of that is in

29:17

use right now? That was other,

29:20

there are some, we know that with this series,

29:22

we're seeing that something we just can't

29:24

get rid of, but to have the same

29:27

power, to be as

29:29

prevalent as it is 20, 30,

29:31

40 years later, not

29:34

many. And

29:35

that says something about the

29:38

makers of COBOL and the people who have adopted

29:40

it. They saw a good thing and they held on

29:42

to it. Not bad for

29:44

a stopgap. Not bad. I

29:47

think in situations like this one,

29:50

there is a focus on newer

29:52

being better. When the older technology

29:55

still does things well, digital

29:58

transformation is only as a as

30:00

the extent of human need and understanding.

30:04

There's no reason why the old

30:06

can't become new or

30:08

at least maintain its relevance

30:11

until the people behind the code are

30:13

truly ready for intentional

30:15

and meaningful change.

30:17

Old can become new. Yep.

30:22

Kim, what is the next

30:24

episode in this series going to be?

30:26

Excellent question. So we

30:29

are Red Hatters and we are known for

30:31

one really great product in particular.

30:34

For the next episode, we are going to apply

30:37

our number one original superlative

30:40

and talk about the operating

30:42

system.

30:46

All right. Well, that was

30:49

it. I mean, we talked about COBOL

30:51

as being an old language, but

30:54

as we know, it's still out there.

30:56

It's still running systems that we use

30:59

each and every day. I would

31:01

love

31:01

to see a resurgence of COBOL.

31:03

Would you? I would love to hear what

31:05

you have to say about it. So hit us up at

31:08

Red Hat on Twitter using the hashtag

31:10

compiler podcast. Also on

31:12

Instagram at Red Hat, what are your thoughts

31:15

about COBOL? Would you be willing to

31:17

dip your toe into the programming world of

31:19

COBOL just to help the world

31:22

out a little bit? We'd be interested in hearing

31:23

what your thoughts are. And that

31:25

does it for this episode of

31:28

Compiler.

31:29

Today's episode was produced by Kim

31:31

Wong and Caroline Craighead.

31:33

A big, big thank you to our

31:36

guests, Scott Spurlock and Jesus

31:38

Frare.

31:38

If you think Victoria Lawton is anything

31:41

short of amazing, tell me why. Provide

31:43

the specifics.

31:44

Support your argument logically.

31:47

Our audio engineer is Robin

31:49

Edgar. Special thanks to Sean Cole.

31:52

Our theme song was composed by Mary Anchetta.

31:54

Our

31:54

audio team includes Lee Day,

31:57

Stephanie Wonderlakes, Mike Esser,

31:59

Nick Burns.

31:59

Aaron Williamson, Karen

32:02

King, Jared Oates, Rachel

32:04

Ertel, Devin Pope, Matias

32:07

Foundez, Mike Compton, Ocean

32:09

Matthews, Paige Johnson, and

32:11

Alex Trebulsi.

32:12

If you'd like today's show, help

32:15

us out by following the show, rating

32:17

the show, or leaving us a review. It

32:19

really does help us out.

32:21

Take care everybody. Until next time.

32:23

Alright, see you later.

32:30

Bye.