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Don't Count Cobol Out
Hugh Pickens writes "Although Turing Award-winning computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once said, 'the use of Cobol cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense,' Michael Swaine has an interesting entry to Dr. Dobb's Journal asserting that Cobol is the most widely used language in the 21st century, critical to some of the hottest areas of software development today, and may be the next language you'll be learning. In 1997, the Gartner Group estimated that there were 240 billion lines of Cobol code in active apps, and billions of lines of new Cobol code are being written every year. Cobol is a key element in the realization of modern distributed business software architecture concepts — XML/metadata, Web Services, Service Oriented Architecture — and e-business."
Long Live the Lords of COBOL.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000200 PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD.
000300
000400*
000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000900
001000 DATA DIVISION.
001100 FILE SECTION.
001200
100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
100100
100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.
100300 BEGIN.
100400 DISPLAY " " LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.
100500 DISPLAY "NO THANKS!" LINE 15 POSITION 10.
100600 STOP RUN.
100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.
100800 EXIT.
Are you wading the waters to determine how palletable COBOL would be in your buzzword soup? Web 2.0 COBOL cloud computing does have a ring to it. Old is the new "new".
they're going to be telling us that Fortran is the new Java.
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
FYI: When he was reprogrammed by John Connor, it was in COBOL.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
What do COBOL coders make these days?
COBOL programs.
<rimshot/>
Have gnu, will travel.
In 1997, the Gartner Group estimated that there were 240 billion lines of Cobol code in active apps, and billions of lines of new Cobol code are being written every year.
The report neglected to mention that 239.9 billion of those lines were boilerplate headers and math operators spelled out with English verbs.
It's really cool if you remove the 'b'.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
What I got when I tried to post the original:
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
So what do you do when yelling is appropriate?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
COBOL may be the best "self-documenting" language. Which I guess isn't very relevant as we know developers love to document their code.
"billions of lines of new Cobol code are being written every year"
that accounts two hello worlds, and one program that shows the first 1000 fibonacci numbers.
factor 966971: 966971
So, Tumbleweed wakes up after almost 8000 years in suspended animation. An official in the year 9999 says, "Having searched the ancient archives of Slashdot, we see that you appear to have a working knowledge of COBOL. We have this Y10K problem coming up and we were wondering if you could possibly give us a hand with it."
Have gnu, will travel.
#include "stdio.h"
#define e 3
#define g (e/e)
#define h ((g+e)/2)
#define f (e-g-h)
#define j (e*e-g)
#define k (j-h)
#define l(x) tab2[x]/h
#define m(n,a) ((n&(a))==(a))
long tab1[]={ 989L,5L,26L,0L,88319L,123L,0L,9367L };
int tab2[]={ 4,6,10,14,22,26,34,38,46,58,62,74,82,86 };
main(m1,s) char *s; {
int a,b,c,d,o[k],n=(int)s;
if(m1==1){ char b[2*j+f-g]; main(l(h+e)+h+e,b); printf(b); }
else switch(m1-=h){
case f:
a=(b=(c=(d=g)g)'g)g;
return(m(n,a|c)|m(n,b)|m(n,a|d)|m(n,c|d));
case h:
for(a=f;a=e)for(b=gg;bn;++b)o[b]=o[b-h]+o[b-g]+c;
return(o[b-g]%n+k-h);
default:
if(m1-=e) main(m1-g+e+h,s+g); else *(s+g)=f;
for(*s=a=f;ae;) *s=(*se)|main(h+a++,(char *)m1);
}
}
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL
Kayamon
Over the next year most of the Batch functionality will be replaced with smaller Real-time enabled called routines running as headless transactions in a CICS region.
I've gotta admit. This make absolutely no sense to me what soever.
When you are doing millions of financial calculations and [sic] hour, you need reliability and rock solid performance.
When you are posting to Slashdot however...
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
I think you underestimate how many banks are actually run by immortal (daywalking) vampires.
Two less.
John
there will still be COBOL.
MOVE A TO B.
COMPUTE GROSS-PAY = HOURS-WORKED * HOURLY-RATE
SET MY-INDEX TO 1
SET ADDRESS OF MY-LINKAGE-SECTION-ITEM TO MY-POINTER
READ TRANSACTION-FILE INTO TRANSACTION-RECORD-WS
MOVE 2101 to AD
BEGIN WAR
SET CAPTAIN = "What happen?"
SET MECHANIC = "We get signal"
SET CAPTAIN = "What?"
OPERATOR MAINSCREEN = TURN-ON
SET CAPTAIN = "It's you!"
SET CATS = "How are you gentlemen?"
SET ALLYOURBASE = BELONGTOUS
SET YOU = AREONTHEWAYTODESCTURCTION
SET CHANCE != SURVIVE
SET LAUGH = "Ha ha ha ha"
OPERATOR CAPTAIN = "!!*"
SET CAPTAIN = "Take off every Zig"
MOVE ZIG FOR GREAT-JUSTICE
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
English comes to mind, but considering some of the posts I see here, I have my doubts.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Merril Lynch reports that 70 percent of its business runs on Cobol apps.
That explains a lot.