How COBOL Still Powers The Global Economy At 60 Years Old

[TexasTowelie]

A 60-year-old computer language powers the global economy.

Estimates as high as 80% of financial transactions use common business-oriented language, or COBOL. Now as programmers retire and fewer are joining the workforce to replace them, the future for the language is uncertain. But rumors of COBOL’s demise are nothing new.

Its death has been predicted many times. In fact, if there is one constant in the history of COBOL it may be predictions of the programming language’s death.

COBOL was created in 1959 by industry and government programmers but even then its future was uncertain.

“In less than a year there were rumors all over the industry that COBOL was dying,” said Grace Hopper, rear admiral and programmer who helped design the language in a 1981 lecture.

Read more: https://www.tpr.org/post/how-cobol-still-powers-global-economy-60-years-old

[tymorial]

1. FORTRAN is still used too. Pretty cool

[Recursion]

5. BLAS is still Fortran; all math software relies on it

It's crazy to me that in 40 years C has not produced an equally capable linear algebra library.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Loved COBOL. My son is a programmer for large insurance company that

has been attempting to migrate from COBOL for 20 years.

[unc70]

3. So is PL/I, the third 1960s language

The big three of program development, each still widely used but rarely taught in colleges.

[William Seger]

6. The third and worst, until C++ came along

... both designed by committees to be all things to all programming, both fell somewhat short.

[unc70]

7. I strongly disagree, but then ...

I am one of the world's experts on PL/I. Compiler writer, member of the Standards committee, etc.

I would agree with criticisms is some areas. For example, the orthogonality in the original design was overdone. There was no need for the COMPLEX attribute being applied additively to currency other than to be able to specify imaginary dollars.

Be curious what your perceived problems with language the might be. Most of the criticisms were addressed several decades ago and codified in the revised standard.

[William Seger]

8. IMO, it was a complex solution to an imaginary problem

i.e. the need for a COBOL/FORTRAN hybrid.

[unc70]

9. Was not an imaginary problem

Was originally intended to be the new version of FORTRAN, the New Programming Language (NPL). Yes, the resulting language included many of the features of FORTRAN, COBOL, and ALGOL. Yes, it was designed by a committee. (At least it was designed unlike messes like C and C++.) But interestingly, even more features were later included in FORTRAN (and even in Basic!) than were in PL/I.

The PL/I Standards Committee actually pounded the language significantly in producing a General Purpose Subset which has supplanted the Full language in mire-recent implementations.

[Recursion]

4. Invented by Grace Murray Hopper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

The greatest computer scientist America produced