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COBOL Turning 50, Still Important

Posted by Soulskill on from the legacy-code's-legacy dept.

Death Metal writes with this excerpt from a story about COBOL's influence as it approaches 50 years in existence: "According to David Stephenson, the UK manager for the software provider Micro Focus, 'some 70% to 80% of UK plc business transactions are still based on COBOL.' ... Mike Gilpin, from the market research company Forrester, says that the company's most recent related survey found that 32% of enterprises say they still use COBOL for development or maintenance. ... A lot of this maintenance and development takes place on IBM products. The company's software group director of product delivery and strategy, Charles Chu, says that he doesn't think 'legacy' is pejorative. 'Business constantly evolves,' he adds, 'but there are 250bn lines of COBOL code working well worldwide. Why would companies replace systems that are working well?'"

2 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. The CABAL invented it to take over the world! by line-bundle · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I managed to finally figure out their world domination plan!

    It's definitely not the Bilderberger group otherwise it would have been called boldorborgor. Naah, too borgish.

  2. That is the problem with WGA... by QuietLagoon · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    'Business constantly evolves,' he adds, 'but there are 250bn lines of COBOL code working well worldwide. Why would companies replace systems that are working well?'"

    .
    That is the problem with Windows Genuine Advantage when used in a corporate environment. It does not matter whether or not the software systems are still working well. There is a remote switch (based in Redmond) that can be used to shut down these functioning systems and force conversions/upgrades. If you do not think it can or will happen, look at the DRM servers that were turned off.