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From the Editors: Long live COBOL

By SD Times News Team

June 1, 2009 — (Page 1 of 2)
COBOL, it appears, is the new Y2K.

As the language turns 50 this year, organizations find themselves in a game of “Beat the Clock” to train a new generation, as the developers and IT administrators who pioneered the development and application of this programming language move into their retirement years.

As Alex Handy lays out in the first of this three-part series on “COBOL at 50,” the language has not only survived, it has thrived in the face of a lifetime of computing advances, and in the face of those who said repeatedly over the years that the language was doomed to die.

The software development industry is not the first to face the issue of an aging workforce taking its knowledge with it as it rides off into the sunset. And SD Times and other publications have been reporting on this for the past number of years. But there is a bright side.

It appears that the current state of the economy is prompting organizations to look back to their COBOL-powered mainframe installations as a way to reduce the costs by leveraging its computing capacity instead of building out bigger rack- and blade-server installations.

While middle-aged programmers who cut their teeth on Visual Basic, C and C++ are loathe to work with COBOL, Alex points out that younger engineers who grew up with PCs in their bedrooms actually are embracing COBOL as another area of knowledge that might help them land a job more quickly.

Some colleges and universities still teach COBOL, while others have moved on to Java and the other object-oriented languages. We’re not sure if that’s because they’re ahead of the curve, or really, really behind the curve. Whatever. The fact that this coursework still is available to students entering college is all that matters. Giving those applications newer-looking front ends (Green is for screen … YUK!) will make it more appealing to the kids who grew up with Web applications that are lightning fast and easy on the eyes.

Related Search Term(s): COBOL, Java, Oracle, Sun

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