>BTW: Isn't COBOL the most primitive language in use ? OK, I assume Basic
>(BASIC ?) is not in use. Isn't COBOL unpopular on other platforms ? Agreed, not even close. Enterprise COBOL is very advanced. XML, Unicode, object stuff, every kind of cross-language calling convention, a really advanced LE runtime, high performance.... The whole article is a bit like arguing that English is primitive so we should all switch to Esperanto. You want your programming language for your tax system to be durable, and COBOL is definitely durable. Scores of "popular" programming languages have come and gone during COBOL's lifetime, and the analysts estimate there's a net new 5 million lines of COBOL each year, today. But if they want to write new business logic in some other language, no problem -- COBOL can fully interoperate with lots of other languages. I did cringe at the Microsoft .NET bit. Not a good idea, IMHO. I would have picked something that didn't *require* such a complex multi-tiered deployment architecture. (Whether I would actually install a complex deployment architecture is another question, but I wouldn't have picked something that required it.) But I realize Accenture has people on the bench they need to use. :-) [Please note that I am speaking only for myself (at most) and not for my employer. My employer has the deepest respect for Accenture, at least occasionally.] - - - - - Timothy F. Sipples Consulting Enterprise Software Architect, z9/zSeries IBM Japan, Ltd. 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
