Modernizing the Common Language - COBOL

Frumious Wombat writes "Over at the Register Developers section, they are quoting the head of research for Ovum Consulting on the continuing dominance of COBOL in certain business applications. The antique language accounted for 75% of all business transactions last year, and some 90% of financial transactions. For all the time spent arguing the merits of Ruby vs. C#, should the community spend more time building tools to make COBOL livable? The article goes into what it terms 'legacy modernization', and lays out some details on how to go about it. From the article: 'The first stage in the legacy modernization process is to understand the business value embodied within legacy systems. This means that developers must give business domain experts (business analysts) access to the legacy, using tools that help them find their way around it at the business level. Some awareness of, say, COBOL and of the legacy architectures will be helpful but we aren't talking about programmers rooting around in code - modern tools can automate much of this analysis for staff working at a higher level.'"

Comments

Re:Not done much debugging in COBOL, have you?

[FlyingGuy]

I actualy have to turn down work regularly because I am usualy working on 5 different projects at the same time.

Now subtext of your comment was quite clear. So listen up. You must surely be one of those "must be bleading edge" fanboys. You know WHY I get hired time after time? My projects come in ahead of schedule and under budget around 90% of the time. My bug fix cost is less then .01% of my revenue. Know why that is? I dont use buzword tech, I use proven and reliable tech. You know what business wants? Hmmmm, do you fanboy? They want a solution that just works from the day I install it, not after the 5th or 6th go 'round like most AJAX / Java / Ruby on Rails / whatever latest non-PTVT tech all you 20 something fanboys sing the praises of.

Ya know what else? I make a lot more money then you do, I would be willing to bet.

The other thing that amuses me is that when people like you attempt to insult someone, you always do it as Anonymous Coward because that is simply what you are.