Where in the World is COBOL?
“Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time”
— A quote by Hannah Arendt, a famous political philosopher and Holocaust survivor. She refers to the joy of moving to an unfamiliar country, out of your comfort zone.
When you are a COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) programmer, it’s good to recognize that the language is still in use in several different countries in the world. COBOL is far from becoming obsolete, as was predicted 30, or even 40, years ago and can open up the possibility of world travel for an experienced COBOL programmer.
Main Countries Using COBOL
In fact, Enlyft (2022) collected data on 37,547 companies that use COBOL. While they did find that the majority of these companies are in the United States and the United Kingdom, there is a COBOL presence in India, Canada, France, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Australia and Germany.
Finding a COBOL Job in Each Country
What if you’re a COBOL developer and you’re thinking about working in one of these countries, doing something that you’ve perhaps been doing for many years? I decided to do my own research on a potential answer to that question.
