Cutting-edge IT firms need experts in ‘dead’ languages

Instead, the sector faces the real threat of a shortage of one of its most crucial resources: programmers who possess legacy skills in older programming languages, such as Cobol and Assembler. Those may sound like a dialect of Klingon to the uninitiated, but Cobol is the language on which up to 80 per cent of the country’s big mainframe computers run.

It can come as a shock in these heady days of mobile and cloud computing to realise that a code first written in 1959, when computers took up entire buildings, is still so mission-critical to the sector.

While our universities are turning out very able graduates, well versed in the sexy new languages of Java, .Net and the like, what many companies are beginning to realise is there is no next generation of legacy skilled professionals. This will present a problem, especially for business-critical systems still running on mainframe computers that require ongoing support and development.

But the truth is that, although a bank’s customer-facing websites may run on Java, all the serious number crunching and transaction processing happens on mainframes. Whether it’s producing your current account or your life assurance statement, it’s all run on these legacy systems. It’s as if, in the age of satellite and digital home cinema, we still need engineers who can fix black-and-white valve-driven TV sets.

Although a perfect world option would be for organisations to move their entire systems to a new platform, this would prove extremely costly at a time when the sector has seen its capital expenditure come under pressure. There are also enormous business risks associated with a transfer from one system to another. So, more than a decade after the millennium bug and Y2K created the last boom in demand for Cobol programmers, it looks as if there may be a resurgence in the need for these legacy skills. However, we’re now 11 years further on and these skills, which are no longer being refreshed, are harder to come by.

There are a number of reasons.

For a start, universities no longer teach these languages. Due to headcount changes and cost constraints, many organisations haven’t continued with their graduate recruitment programmes in IT.

The generation of Cobol-literate programmers are either nearing retirement age, have moved up the managerial ladder or are quite happy in their existing roles. The established talent pool is getting older and is becoming ever more expensive as it gets more experienced.

If the situation isn’t remedied soon then financial companies will be poaching a diminishing number of specialists from each other and driving up salaries and contract rates accordingly in the fight for talent.

Faced with this situation, graduates may want to look again at Cobol, especially as there are some ten graduates chasing every Java-programming job in Scotland. However, our universities have no plans to reintroduce these “dead” languages into the curriculum.

So, how do we reskill a workforce to adapt not only to challenges of the new but also to cope with the legacy of the old? Universities in conjunction with major employers should work together to address this issue.

Given there are more than 220 billion lines of Cobol code in use in the world at the moment, a figure that is still growing, then both the job security of programmers, as well as the resilience of their employers, looks to be assured.

Indeed as Scotland continues to develop its Cobol skills, we could become a centre of excellence in legacy computer skills. Scotland could attract lucrative projects and programmes of work from elsewhere, thereby turning the real threat into an opportunity for growth and development.

l Karen Scott is managing director of Hudson IT Scotland.