Nat Torkington on the O’Reilly blog points out some interesting figures on COBOL published this week.

There’s something not right about those figures. That depth of market penetration just doesn’t stack up. At the time of writing there have been in the last 7 days a total of 154 jobs with the word ‘COBOL’ in it posted on JobServe. For comparison, there were 4,771 with ‘Java’ in there, 3,016 with ‘C#’ and 3,033 with C++ in the description or title. To suggest COBOL is a major force in IT these days just doesn’t make sense.

It’s not as if there is much money in it right now either - £35k/year salaried maximum, or £313/day contract tops. Compare that to a minimum average salary of £37k (with maximum touching almost £47k) or average day rate of £486 for Java.

Ruby’s figures are all over the place right now - 45% lower on average compared to this time last year - because there are so many kids who learnt Rails 15 minutes ago asking for PHP rates, but I don’t think they actually know what they’re doing. I certainly don’t think people paying that rate are going to be impressed with the people walking in the door, and may be turned off Rails/Ruby completely.

I don’t know anybody doing serious Ruby development work who actually knows and has experience of the language on less than £275/day - and for quality coders, that figure is going to rise soon, I figure. My ‘sticker price’ has been around £300/day and has held up pretty well over the last year, but I’m starting to give discounts to some projects because I actually like them and the people involved in them, and I want to be competitive to get those jobs.

That said, there is something interesting about COBOL and the way we see languages like it too. Some people are out on the front edge finding the best way to do things - cheaper, faster, better - by exploring whole new language paradigms, methodologies and tools. I consider myself to be one of that crowd: I’m already looking at what might be next after Ruby hits critical mass. Consider me an ‘early adopter coder’ interested in doing things better.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people out there who just want things to keep on working as they have done for the last 30 years and they don’t care it could be done better. They’re just glad it’s being done and want programmers to make sure it stays that way. I think they’re sensible in one regard, but I wonder how much money they’re losing in service and maintenance charges?

I have been offered COBOL work in the last few months, and if I hadn’t been so busy I might have taken it on. I suspect there might be a big market in helping all those old tech houses upgrade without having to go and get ripped off by one of the more expensive consultancies - it might be that as we shift business paradigms from call centers and shops with staff over to buying online, this is the perfect time for those businesses to move over, upgrade, and put 30 years of hurt behind them.

Either way, COBOL is dying regardless of what the surveys say, and it’s dying fast. Java is stable, but nobody loves it. Meanwhile, the Ruby figures scare the hell out of me - I know there is scarcity in this market, so why the low prices being put out by IT recruitment agencies? What other weird languages are there out there with weird market prices?