COBOL
This updates my article at:

COBOL for Not Yet Techies

COBOL is a language that although nearly as archaic to
modern programming as Middle English, refuses to go
away. It is still being used by an untold number of
mainframe "legacy" computers in large businesses and
government.

It would probably not be used if these organizations were
starting out today, but since it is in place and the programs
are proven to work, it would be too expensive to replace
them.

So old workhorse COBOL programs just keep on keeping
on.The number of people learning it is going down. Right
now, there are about 2,000,000 COBOL programmers
available, but that will go down to 1,500,000 by 2007.

Many organizations want to make the transition from
COBOL to the 21st century, but migrating platforms
still requires COBOL expertise - which will get harder
to find as the years pass.

The current standard is COBOL 2002, the first since
1985. This was approved by the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) in September 2002 and published
in December 2002. ANSI adopted this standard for the US
in July 2003. WG4 has decided to adopt the next standard in
2008.

You can read about the big changes they made in 2002 at:

COBOL 2002 changes

It starts with the ACCEPT screen and ends WRITING without
a record-name.

COBOL is one of the oldest computer technologies still in
active use. Part of the reason is that it is relatively easy to
understand. One reason we got through the Y2K crisis so
easily is that, once companies realized they had to fix the
problem, it was much easier to change their legacy COBOL
than other languages would have been.
- posted by RickStooker @ 12:01 PM (0) comments