> How much COBOL code can run on a regular Ubuntu machine?
All of it. GNU Cobol exists, as do proprietary solutions from companies like Micro Focus that target the JVM and .NET (which is what you're looking for for a real COBOL solution).
But why is it so important to run COBOL on Ubuntu? If you need Linux, create a Linux LPAR on your mainframe.
> What's the package manager for OSS packages?
COBOL code runs Western civilization. Not having muh NPM is a feature, not a bug.
> You know you're in trouble when "There's a syntax file for VSCode." is the height of your modernity.
Dude. COBOL has entire modern IDEs written for it.
It's the same problem z/OS has: There's no hobbyist community so it remains obscure. Yes, you can run 1980s-era System/370 software under Hercules, but IBM keeps anything remotely modern under lock and key even though you'd think it would benefit IBM to have people indoctrinate themselves into the Blue Worldview.
It might not be legal, but it isn't hard to find newer versions to download if you know where to look – z/OS 1.11 is floating around, it is from 2009, so still rather old, but a lot newer than the 1970s. Also you can find some OS/390 and MVS/ESA versions from before that (1990s vintage). If someone privately runs it for purely non-commercial purposes – I myself never have, but some people do – I think it is rather unlikely IBM will sue them.
The easiest way to get z/OS install media is to sign up for zPDT – it costs many thousands, but still a lot cheaper than what IBM charges for z/OS for an actual physical mainframe – and then you get the the ADCD media with that. The problem is, starting with z/OS 1.15, IBM began encrypting the ADCD media. As part of the installation, the media is decrypted, using the key on the hardware dongle – but the decrypted copy is watermarked with the dongle ID, meaning that IBM can trace back any leak to the individual customer responsible for it. This means people are no longer willing to publicly share ADCD media, although I've heard rumours of some people passing it around privately, only to trusted individuals. Someone could reverse-engineer the watermarking and remove it, but I'm not aware anybody has done that–I think people would still worry, what if they failed to completely understand the watermarking, and hence some of it survived?
Backward compatibility. In 1970, you buy an IBM mainframe and start writing apps to run on it. In 2023, you are still running the same code base - albeit with innumerable enhancements and fixes over the ensuing decades. On an IBM mainframe, that code base will just work. On Linux, it won’t even run - unless you buy some expensive mainframe rehosting package, which is full of gaps and limitations, and may introduce obscure bugs which the original lacked.
Reliability - most large-scale Linux systems are based on a distributed model - the app runs on a cluster containing dozens/hundreds/thousands of servers, if a single server has a hardware fault, the app just keeps on working and at worst some user might get an error which goes away if they retry. So, no point in spending $$$$ to maximise the reliability of any individual node.
By contrast, many mainframe customers have just one mainframe, and if it breaks they go down - which means the mainframe hardware has to be super-reliable, filled with redundancy, error detection/recovery, etc - and you pay $$$$ for all that redundancy.
IBM mainframes can be clustered - e.g. z/OS Parallel Sysplex - but only the largest sites do that. The maximum supported cluster size is 32 - I wonder if anyone actually runs one that big, 32 mainframes would be horrendously expensive - while Linux clusters with hundreds or thousands of nodes are quite common.
I don’t know if it is official IBM strategy but from outside it looks like they want all their old technologies including z/OS to die so IBM can focus on software consulting without need to build/maintain anything big themselves.
There are several programming languages with package managers that work better than NPM. Not having one is not a positive no matter how you try to spin it.
What exactly would you package manage if you had a package manager for COBOL? You will never get paid to work on any COBOL code that isn't proprietary, and sealed with the blood of innocent victims. You are not going to be installing the latest hot js framework on a mainframe.
> You are not going to be installing the latest hot js framework on a mainframe.
I think IBM would disagree with you, given how much they've pushed Linux (and, therefore, Linux web servers running Node and kin) on their mainframes. You won't be installing much of anything like that on a midrange system, but Linux on Z is pretty well established.
Doesn't that depend on the client company, rather than IBM? I'm going with what I know from the one (big,financial) corp that I worked in with COBOL on mainframes; there, we didn't use linux at all.
Anyway those environments are downright sclerotic (the worst thing about working with COBOL that nobody mentions). They didn't even let me install Firefox on my work laptop. They had people doing web dev, obviously, but the mainframe teams were more, let's say, conservative.
I know you’re attacking my point but I think you’re actually agreeing here. COBOL is tied to proprietary stuff running on big iron, and its claims to modernity are window dressing.
In fact the very first visual compile/debug environment was written in COBOL over 40 years ago: Micro Focus's Animator (from which Microsoft paid to use the patents in their Visual products iirc).
Honestly I picked Ubuntu at random. My point is there’s something intrinsically old school about something being tied to expensive proprietary hardware and while that remains true, it’s still a (possibly very lucrative) cul de sac.
I’m pretty bullish about the importance of COBOL, but while I have a lot of respect for the people working with it right now, it’s not something I’d recommend to someone at the start of their career.
All of it. GNU Cobol exists, as do proprietary solutions from companies like Micro Focus that target the JVM and .NET (which is what you're looking for for a real COBOL solution).
But why is it so important to run COBOL on Ubuntu? If you need Linux, create a Linux LPAR on your mainframe.
> What's the package manager for OSS packages?
COBOL code runs Western civilization. Not having muh NPM is a feature, not a bug.
> You know you're in trouble when "There's a syntax file for VSCode." is the height of your modernity.
Dude. COBOL has entire modern IDEs written for it.