COBOL may be considered taboo by many in today’s startup-driven culture, but its influence and irreplaceability mean it's very unlikely we've seen the last of it,
especially as significant enhancements to COBOL are now making it a viable alternative to other more modern languages.
Enhancements in COBOL 2002 extended the power of the CALL statement. New features added in other
parts of the language help with interoperability. As a result of these enhancements,
COBOL can now use application programming interfaces written for C/C++ as well as other languages.
Humorous definitions from academia: “COBOL /koh′bol/, n. A weak, verbose, and flabby
language used by code grinders to do boring mindless things on dinosaur mainframes. Its
very name is seldom uttered without expressions of disgust.” Funny that the business
world still runs on it.
Today’s foundational COBOL code was written years before man walked on the moon. The
systems that rely on that old code still power significant parts of
institutionalized computing. If someone ever pulled the plug on COBOL, so to speak,
many organizations worldwide would collapse.
Just as 1990s C++ looks nothing like today’s C++, modern COBOL doesn't look much
like its 1970s version. This is true as well for JavaScript and C#. COBOL 2023 now
supports many of the language features present in C# and Java, allowing for the
in-process integration of codebases.
Want to achieve COBOL programming success? Here are some added technical skills that
may support your goals: IBM z/OS, Db2 QMF, TSO, ISPF, Job Control Language (JCL),
MVS/JCL, Customer Information Control System (CICS), Virtual Storage Access Method
(VSAM), Oracle SQL, Java, XML.
A comparative study of languages illustrates the inherent limitations of COBOL.
Python, JavaScript and C++ offer greater flexibility in computing environments, so
you may be surprised to hear that COBOL is used in new mainframe-based A.I.
application development: queue “Stratus”.
COBOL supports advanced versions of the IF and CASE/SWITCH constructs but, unlike
most procedural programming languages, it also supports a greater variety of
condition types including relation conditions, class conditions, sign conditions,
complex conditions, and condition names.
COBOL’s inherent longevity explains the predominance of COBOL in the Y2K problem:
12,000,000 COBOL applications vs. 1,400,000 C++ applications in the U.S. alone. When
programmers were writing these apps they just didn’t anticipate that the software
would last into this millennium.
It is a testament to COBOL’s original design that there have been only 4 updates to
it over the last 63 years, which has given COBOL a reputation of being extremely
stable and easily supportable – and therefore difficult to replace with new, and
seemingly more powerful languages.
Although COBOL’s design precludes it from being a general-purpose language, it is
well suited for developing data-driven business applications. COBOL’s forte is the
processing of financial transactions, which puts it at the heart of the
mission-critical systems that run the world.
Here’s the thing about legacy systems based on COBOL: they’ve been thoroughly
debugged and are less vulnerable to attack. When downtime costs are measured in
millions of dollars per minute, code stability and security are a lot more important
than agility and flashy new features.
There is a Goliath among programming languages that continues to rewrite the
rulebooks on what long-term application value means to businesses around the world.
It manages to consistently amaze the IT industry with its longevity and ability to
adapt and innovate ... It is COBOL.
The 2012 ComputerWorld Survey compared Visual Basic, C#, C++, and Java to COBOL for
batch processing, transaction processing, business-oriented features, runtime
efficiency, security, reporting, development costs, and maintenance costs. In every
instance, COBOL scored the highest.
A great majority of Fortune 500 companies are actively using COBOL including nearly
all banks, insurance companies, airlines, railroads and retail point-of-sale
systems. According to numerous media sources, over $3 trillion in daily commerce
flows through systems built with COBOL.
COBOL remains a dominant force in the world of enterprise computing. However,
considering today’s growing scarcity of COBOL programmers, it’s easy to understand
the impending crisis – given that replacing legacy COBOL systems has proved to be
difficult, expensive and dangerous.
The financial services industry is one of the biggest spenders on IT, and the
majority of that spending is on maintenance activities required to keep legacy
COBOL-based systems operational. It is reliably estimated that 75% of IT budgets are
consumed maintaining existing systems.
