Category: General

When you want to get to know someone in person, how do you generally accomplish that? Initially, you probably try to learn their characteristics, then you determine how to talk to them. The process is similar for online connections. First, you want to get to know their demographics and their psychological traits (psychographics), then you find ways to communicate with them.

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Assuming that the majority of the online COBOL-related audience are COBOL programmers, their average age would be 55. Also, in an Evans Data Corporation survey, 27.5% of software developers in the world are women. Thus, the demographic of an online COBOL audience is probably men around age 55. Based on this demographic, some psychographic information about this group is that they are conservative, upper-middle-class, and are followers. In addition, according to the survey mentioned, one-fifth of men software developers have a personal interest in the technologies they are using. Consequently, one in five of COBOL listeners have a personal interest in COBOL technologies.

Now that we have identified some characteristics of COBOL online listeners, one of the ways to find out how to communicate with this audience on social media is to search on Twitter. In this case, a Twitter search on #cobol came back with several related people to follow. Similarly, a search on COBOL in Google Trends resulted in 23 related queries and 19 related topics to investigate. In terms of Facebook communities, related groups and pages included a COBOL Programmers group with 16,000 members and a COBOL page with 3200 members.

A screenshot of a COBOL search in Facebook

It is important to remember not to initiate a conversation too quickly in an unfamiliar COBOL online community. Some are primarily for job postings and others are used to sell online courses. Become a listener.  Get to know the demographics and psychographics of the group you are interested in before you start communicating.

What is your online style? Are you mainly a listener? Which online communities do you enjoy following?

 

 

Before I tell you about my most recent vacation, let me tell you a bit about myself. According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I am an Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging (INTJ) person. Being logical, methodical, and conceptual makes me ideally suited for my profession as a computer programmer,  which is a suggested career for the INTJ personality type.

Since the pandemic lockdown started six months ago, I have been spending most days continuously at home on my computer doing coding, analysis, system testing, mentoring, or attending meetings in this new virtual work world. No more breaks for water cooler gossip or work kitchen chats. No long commute to psych myself up at the beginning of the day or wind down at the end.

By the summer, I badly needed a vacation break. As usual, in keeping with my scheduled, systematic nature and the list-making preferences of my personality type, I wrote down all of the things I wanted to do on my time off.

This summer, at the top of my list, was a family get-away vacation to a cottage on Otter Lake in Quebec. With limited travel allowed between provinces this year, we booked it ahead, sight unseen, with very few pictures. It was a risk, but in the end, it was a beautiful peaceful, waterfront location about a half-mile from the main road. We had rented it for two weeks at the end of July. It was gorgeous weather and very relaxing.

Otter Lake view from our cottage

Another thing on my list of things to do on my vacation was to give my daughter some practice driving. She just passed the written test at the beginning of the year and driving school classes and in-car lessons immediately shut down in mid-March.

It was very awkward being in the car with her over the summer. As a teenager, she was sure everything I told her was wrong. Ultimately, we made it through driving sessions and online practice tests together. It was a valuable bonding experience.

My daughter at the wheel

My vacation to-do list would not have been complete without having a computer-related item on it somewhere. With no end in sight for remote programming work, I took some time to set up my own separate home office space with a desk, monitor, new chair, and treadmill.

I faced my desk to the window, put up a bird feeder, and found I had some work-at-home buddies. My cat, Oreo, loves to lie on my desk and look out the window, watching the birds eat. Of course, once I had my new office in place, I also had to take a sneak peek at the work emails I was getting during vacation.

   

Oreo on my desk and the Finches on the bird feeder

In the end, I did not get everything on my vacation list done, but overall, it was a relaxing, successful, semi-productive time off.

 

Have you looked at where you fall on the Myers-Briggs scale?

It may surprise you to see that your career choices, as well as your list-making tendencies, correspond to your personality type.

The Programming Professional on Social Media

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When you think of the various Social Media Networks, LinkedIn is the first one that comes to mind as the main professional Social Media resource. Professionals looking for, and providing, information in their field would tend to look there first. Unfortunately, what’s often missed, are the sometimes hidden gems of information garnered through Facebook pages and groups, Twitter tweets, or Pinterest pins. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to use the example of “COBOL Programming” to illustrate that there is information to be found on each of these Social Media Networks for Programming Professionals

Facebook as a Programming Resource

After doing a search for the word “COBOL” on my Facebook account and scrolling through the results, I can see that there are several types of information that are available and useful to both the new and experienced COBOL Programmer. Of course, given the volume, you would need to take time to filter through each type and determine if it is current, valid, and useful to your context. On a cursory first glance though, in the list of pages to “like” and groups to join, one group that stands out is “COBOL Programmers”, which currently has 10,775 members and has daily activity. Members frequently post interesting information and other members ask related questions. With almost 11,000 experts at your fingertips, how could it not be a useful resource?

The COBOL Facebook search result also came up with PDF links for COBOL tutorials, programmer guides, and professional blogs (such as the Micro Focus Company blog). If they were to be cited as professional sources of information, these documents would have to be verified as reliable resources. This article, “How Can I tell if a Website is Credible”, provides some helpful ideas for what to look for in determining the credibility of a source.

Professionalism in Twitter Tweets

A search for COBOL on Twitter revealed a smaller presence than on Facebook. However, there are some Twitter COBOL-related profiles that are recently active and have tweets with interesting links. One of note is “COBOL60” that celebrates the 60^th birthday of COBOL in a professional manner. The tweets on this profile typically contain links to courses or related websites. Again, some time would be necessary to read through thoroughly and filter the information, for credibility.

Below is a screenshot of my COBOL search result on Twitter. As well as several COBOL-related “People”, there is also professional noteworthy information under the “Photos” and “Videos” sections from such companies as Micro Focus, Red Hat, Raincode and others. As you can see, COBOL information for the professional is also present on Twitter.

Screenshot of COBOL results on Twitter

Pinterest for Computer Professionals                                                                               

Pinterest is a Social Media, online service, that allows users to organize and share images and videos. A search on COBOL in Pinterest resulted in many, many pins. From a Professional perspective, several of the pins are for COBOL courses and tutorials of varying levels, debugging tools, and related programming information.

To be honest, I hadn’t considered Pinterest as a resource for job-related information before. After this first look, I can see that there could be a whole separate discussion on the programming information and categories available on Pinterest. I can’t wait to get back to it to start organizing and filtering some of the useful information I’ve seen.

Screenshot of a COBOL result on Pinterest

The future of Professionalism on Social Media

With Social Media advancing at such a fast rate, it’s hard to predict its future.  A recent article,“What Will Social Media Look Like in the Future” discusses possible future trends such as:

1. 1. More privacy and security
   2. More video
   3. Less personal content
   4. Premium services and fewer ads
   5. Mobile focused experience
   6. Less typing, and more visuals

Only time will tell if the future will find Social Media moving more toward the informal or more toward the formal.

If you haven’t done it already, think of your own work-related topic and try to research it on Social Media. You might be surprised by the wealth of information you find.

Common Business Oriented Language is a very old, yet still widely used, computer language. Banks, insurance companies and governments still process their data through computer programs written in COBOL and run on Mainframes. There are different forms of COBOL programs that are run.

Job Control Language (JCL)

Batch COBOL programs can be scheduled through Job Control Language (JCL) to be run at a specific time, in a certain order. For example, data can be batched and processed overnight to update the database with the new data. JCL can be set to specify who has access to run the program as well as time parameters.

CICS

There are also CICS programs that are online COBOL programs that are run in real-time for screen display and data capture. For instance, when programs run, screens are displayed to a user. The user then enters data on the screen. The data is processed and saved in the background.