A little hyperbolic, don't you think? :-) First of all, there's some good, independent evidence that the total number of lines (and function points) of COBOL-under-management in the world is *growing* rather substantially. If you want to call that moribund, you could, but that wouldn't be the plain English meaning of the word.
Second, there's a relatively short list of programming languages which are "durable." Durable languages are those which have such a large portfolio of valuable code in service that they will last, for all practical purposes, "forever." COBOL and PL/I are two of the languages on that list of durable languages. Even FORTRAN is on that list, as it happens. I think the only remaining question is how COBOL will evolve. (It will.) Which enhancements will get delivered first? And that's up to COBOL customers and their requirements. Steve Comstock posted a list of previously delivered COBOL improvements. I don't speak for IBM, but I can certainly say that IBM is investing in COBOL enhancements and will continue to. Rest assured, it makes good business sense for IBM to do that, for many reasons. As a side note, if you're only looking for COBOL innovations under a single IBM program number, you're seriously missing much of the picture. Rational Developer for System z -- just upgraded to Version 7.6 -- and WebSphere ILOG Rules for COBOL are but two significant examples. So what do you want? Ask for it (formally). You'll often get it. It's that simple. Or we can go around in circles again here if you want. :-) - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan / Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
