Yeah, #3 is the one I keep coming back to. "COBOL? I took a COBOL class in 1975; how can it compete with a modern language like <insert favorite here>?"
The same thing with mainframes; they're from the 1950s, and should long since have gone to a well-deserved grave. They were great in their day, but... We had this conversation after that news item about a New-England state government's difficulty with some web-based function that had mainframes in the background; I don't remember the details, but there were problems getting the application's attention on the web, and the article concluded it must be because it used aging mainframes running COBOL. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. -Erasmus */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Seymour J Metz Sent: Monday, March 27, 2023 09:56 I believe that the problems are: 1. Some people conflate the language and those who use it. 2. Some people believe that those who use the language are interchangeable. 3. Some people think of COBOL as not having changed since CODASYL. ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Bob Bridges Sent: Monday, March 27, 2023 9:44 AM I myself dislike COBOL for the very simple and personal reason that it's so WORDY. But even when I had to use it a lot (I was a COBOL developer for about 15 years), I was aware that it's a powerful language with good organizational features for what we used to call top-down programming, and I enjoy sneering (a nasty, superior smirk) at claims that it's a dinosaur and will soon die an unmourned death as other languages supplant it. Not gonna happen, not in my lifetime anyway. Maybe in the Millennium, though I'm doubtful. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
