(Updated 4/10: IBM and the Linux Foundation have partnered to set up a portal for both experienced and new COBOL coders to share resources and find opportunities. Here's a link to IBM's press release ...

With COVID-19 dealing both a healthcare and an economic crisis, the nation’s governors have been issuing increasingly urgent pleas for skills and supplies. On a Saturday earlier this month, New Jersey ...

What is COBOL? According to IBM, COBOL stands for common business-oriented language and is a high-level compiled programming language developed for business data processing needs.

Last summer, Michael Vu, a 40-year-old independent IT consultant, found himself in a wholly unexpected place midway through his career. He’d signed a three-week contract to help a major U.S. retailer ...

Specifically, a half-century old programming language, COBOL (which stands for Common Business-Oriented Language), can’t handle the demand.

College graduates with Cobol training are in short supply. In Michigan, for example, state schools that offer Cobol programming education have cancelled classes because of a lack of interest.

The share of searches per million for the programming language COBOL on the job site Indeed grew 707% during the coronavirus crisis. While job seekers are interested in the language — largely used for ...

Despite the month it took to accomplish those programming changes, Iowa's reliance on COBOL hasn't been an issue during the pandemic, said Workforce Development spokeswoman Molly Elder.

Although technologies such as Java and XML continue to dominate headlines, and new architectures like WebSphere and .NET gain momentum, the need to improve return on IT investment is forcing ...