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Smithsonian Celebrates 50 Years of COBOL
wiredog writes "The Atlantic reports the news that the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has a new section of their website dedicated to documenting COBOL's history. An exhibit will open at the museum this spring."
Under cover of darkness, employees of the Museum of Natural history broke in and appropriated the exhibit to add to their world-renowned dinosaur collection...
If they put it next to exhibits of the Great Chicago Fire, Love Canal, and Three Mile Island then I would applaud the curators for their good taste.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
When I read the headline, my head parsed "Smithsonian celebrates 150 Years of COBOL" ... but I guess that's just because when it's COBOL, it only feels like 150 years.
There will not be a single dedicated area to show off the exhibit. Instead, the exhibit will be scattered about in separate rooms called copybooks.
Especially if it was among the first real programming languages you learned, and you can still remember what COBOL stands for without looking it up (guilty)!
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
... in the Paleontology area.
Check your premises.
Somehow that line just doesn't have the same ring coming from a 7-digit UID.
Instead of stuxnet, assistant coaches from the New York Jets football team will line up to trip unsuspecting programmers carrying boxes of cards containing the source code.
Completely Obsolete Boring Old Language
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
"Feeling old yet? Smithsonian...perfect. Just perfect."
(Was my friend's response...I'm too young to appreciate this fully, he is not).
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
This fortune was so close to being in this article:
COBOL is for morons. -- E.W. Dijkstra
Too bad this article wasn't posted sooner
It may be crass to admit, but I had some great experiences working in my first COBOL position. Sure it dates me...so what, I got a lawn and am proud of it. I do appreciate the development tools I use as a current developer, but something about the simplicity, and the structure make me feel nostalgic. Lately I see code with no documentation, no good structure and buggy. COBOL, FORTRAN, and Pascal separated IT programmers (and staff) from middle managers and office workers that today think writing an Access VBA makes them a .net developer. You can't go back (nor would I, but for the need of a job), yet I would like to see some of the foundations that went into development groups make a comeback.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
I used to program in Cobol and I used to measure my code in the number of feet of paper that the lineprinter would print instead of lines of code. Even the "Hello World" program would be more than 1 foot in length...
I remember seeing ads for COBOL programmers in the careers section of the paper throughout the 1990's... with steadily increasing salary ranges, right up until about mid-October of 1999, where I was routinely seeing offers 80K per year or sometimes even more for new grads, it seemed that there were quite a few companies getting desperate to have COBOL programmers.
Then, suddenly, within the space of only a week or two, the COBOL programmer ads stopped.
By November, every last one of them was gone.
I never saw another COBOL programmer wanted ad after that. Ever.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
THere's going to be lots of comments about how old COBOL is and it should be replaced for something modern - but it still works and there's some huge systems run by huge companies. It still works and it still does things better than other languages.
Dear God, I'm old.
Laugh it up, kids! Your favorite language is next.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Is "Celebrates" the correct word to use in this context?
They also announced a COBOL App Store so users could easily find and install useful applications. The inaugural app was "Angry Birds" for the Honeywell 200. Ordering this app will have a box with the punch cards delivered to your house, and a complete installation manual. The second offering was a fart app for the UNIVAC series.
By the 1970s, COBOL had become the preferred programming language for commercial data processing. Since then, Java, C #, and other languages have taken over many of its functions.
They slightly skipped a few things between COBOL and C#, lol.
Better known as 318230.
Celebrate COBOL? Why? Ewwwww...
Coming up next, celebrations of MS-DOS, Lotus Notes, and the Mac?
C ey!! FORTRAN is older (and cooler) than COBOL .GT. 50
FORTRAN
FORTRAN = 54.0 + ABIT
COBOL = WHIP + R + SNAP + R
STOP
END
Oh crap, it was number 3 for me -- BASIC, Pascal, COBOL.
COmmon Business Oriented Language -- do I get a cookie?
Crap, I am old.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Contrary to popular believe, # of digits in Slashdot ID is only loosely correlated to beard-length.
I'm sure we've got a fair few neck-beards with 7 digit IDs.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I guess I just need to go out and learn Fortran for the old school trifecta!
I know my first year CS they taught Pascal, and then changed standards to C the following year. Thanks for that. COBOL was, and probably still is taught for those students with high pain thresholds.
I don't actually program for a living (though I use scraps here and there), so I don't have all the new sexier languages. I know the few times I have applied for a new positions, having those languages and stuff like Assembly, etc... on my resume managers look at you like you have two heads or something. Then are somehow unimpressed you don't have any experience in whatever trendy new language they are smoking. Rarely are they looking for the guy that says programing is programing, I'll learn it. They want some cheap code jockey that has been currently using it in his job and can start hacking right away. Just as well really, probably wouldn't want to work for them anyway by the sounds of it.
COBOL is for morons. -- E.W. Dijkstra
FreeSpeech.org
in between the History of Cardboard Armor and X-Ray based shoe store gages.
In The Tao of Programming: The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler. The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages. Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao. But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.
Yeah, it is real easy to get all snarky about COBOL. I have always hated it even though it was a popular language when I was in school (late 70's). My CS department had three separate non-overlapping courses you could take.
The thing is that just about any programmer, even if they don't know COBOL, could go in and change it. COBOL is readable. The record based functionality is simple to comprehend. Something written 30 years ago is still running because there is nothing wrong with it. It does what its supposed to do. It was the perfect solution to the most important business problems of its day, and that legacy is why it is still around while other languages of its era are not.
Should new programs be written in it? HELL NO!!!! The problem set to which COBOL applies is pretty well solved. The new problems require new solutions.
-Xanthos
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
The centerpiece of the exhibit will be a limited time viewing of the mummified remains of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper - currently scheduled for one nanosecond.
I actually liked working with COBOL in college. We were gearing up for the Y2K issue and our instructors figured it would be good to have on the resume. It was interesting to see how people approached problems in such a verbose language.
Personally I've never used COBOL in the wild, but I did pick up some interesting tricks and an appreciation for looking at data differently. So I have applied tricks I learned for COBOL in other places and it's been very helpful.
As a programmer this gave me a huge smile and a feeling of happiness. So awesome seeing the work of legends in the proper light, shows to the public. Everyday we stand on the shoulders of these giants. If I could go back and say thank you I would. They changed the world.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
I have a story. I once worked in a factory where the computer systems were written in COBOL, and it, to put it politely, sucked. We needed data to manage our jobs in the shop and buying requests to fill our orders but there was no way to get the data the way we needed it. After surviving a layoff I inherited a PC with a 3270 terminal emulator card and proceeded to reprogram the board to extract information off of the on-line CICS system so I could reprocess it the way we needed it. I created a callable library of routines to manage these extractions. Once I had the basics for extracting information by mapping the terminal output to data fields I could then instruct it to page forward through each application and extract the information to a floppy, memory (didn't have much), or print it. I had no direct link to the corporate database system, only the ability to scrape information off of the virtual console and reorganize it as I chose to do.
With that library I then spent half of an afternoon using that 'tool' to build an application which extracted a recursive bill of materials from the system for any product I wanted to build. It took less than 4 hours to get the proof of concept done and start using it. My manager saw how effective I had become in doing my job and asked my secret, and I showed him, the report the the Data Processing Department had been telling us for seven years that they could not do. They had told me it was impossible.
Once my boss saw the report I handed him he marched back into the DP managers office and demanded that they build the same program for everyone to use, throwing that report on his desk. That same report, with direct access to the database, written in COBOL, took over 6 Man-Months to write. With my little PC and virtual-console library I did it in under 4 hours using Turbo Pascal. Which language do you want to program in?
People are snarky about COBOL because it is still around and more akin to BASIC than to true elitist languages like C/C++. And they hate to admit but it doesn't matter what you code with as long as it works.
My first language was Commodore BASIC (v2), which tainted me heavily as a programmer. The second was 6502 Assembly, which felt like the shades falling from my eyes back in my C64 days even though it was difficult to get anything done. Third up was Visual Basic 5 and VBA years later.. yes.. I'm guilty of cobbling nasty converters in MS Access but I'm hopefully somewhat redeemed by the fact that my VBA-crap wer exclusively one-off preprocessors before larger imports into a real RDBMS. Then I went on to PHP, which is interesting because it teaches bad habits if you let it but doesn't require them per se.. and right now C++ is slowly pulling my nails out.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
Cobol might be a pretty easy joke for obsolescence, but remember that Cobol was written by a woman in a time where the industry was far more male dominated than it is today.
Though I've never programmed in Cobol, it made a big impression on me as a kid to show that anybody could program a computer, or use a computer to create something cool.
How is that an acronym for Ruby On Rails?
Cobol Programmers know why women hate periods....
should be included into the Smithsonian! They're still using COBOL!
Unluckily, this is not a joke.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Disaster? Hardly. Let's see where "insert your favorite language here" is after 50 years. A recent Gartner study found COBOL in about 75% of enterprise business processes still today.
Just because it won't die, doesn't mean it's a success.
Also, there are probably folks with 7 digit UIDs that used to have 4 digit UIDs, but loss them for some reason. Plus, hell I was almost fifty when slashdot started.
Free Martian Whores!
I only have stubble - it is getting to be more grey than dark brown every day though.
Did they talk about the object-oriented version of COBOL? It's named ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Despite all (justified!) COBOL bashing, you'll have to concede that a 50 years old COBOL compiler could (had to) run on a VERY modest amount of RAM... something that isn't immediately obvious, considering that compilers of current languages are true resource hogs in comparison.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Dear Cyberdong,
You think YOU'RE old?
- God
From what I hear, 1 year is too damn long, let alone 50. Hey The Atlantic, are you sure you didn't mean "recognizes" or "observes" or hell, maybe "mourns"?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Or should I say: COMPUTE Object-Oriented-COBOL = Rocks * Rocks.
P.S. The code would have been ALL CAPS, but the Slashdot filter wouldn't allow me to put in the code PROPERLY! LOL!
Since 1982, I've worked with these languages (& I am literally 'dating' myself here on each one, as I learned them first time &/or used them on the job):
BASIC (1982)
COBOL (1985 77/85 std.'s)
ASSEMBLY (1991 x86 MASM/TASM)
C (1991)
PASCAL (1992)
C++ (1992)
FORTRAN (1993)
VB (1994)
ASP.NET (2003 - better ISAPI really with garbage cleanup run server-side, faster than std./orig. ASP)
VB.NET (2003 - love it for building intranet apps)
C# (2003 - This is MS' "near-equivalent" to JAVA (which runs everywhere))
JAVA (2008 - I like that it runs on so much hardware/platforms)
---
SQL (1994 & I have been using it professionally, & extensively w/ nearly ALL of the languages listed above (as it's a massively FLEXIBLE business programming tool alongside relational databasing))
Personally?
I like PASCAL (Delphi 7) & C++ (MSVC or Borland C++ Builder 6) the best of the lot (both are VERY fast buildtimes nowadays & in the past, & have incredible strings & math processing power/speed)!
I respect JAVA for "running everywhere" (even if it's slower than the others)...
HOWEVER:
SQL is the main "tool of my trade" over time for work + with nearly ALL of the languages listed above... SQL: It's amazing, & fairly easy (well, yes, I have had HUGE & tough queries/queries-on-huge queries pop up now & again, lol, so... take that "easy" with a "grain of salt").
"COBOL, FORTRAN, and Pascal separated IT programmers (and staff) from middle managers and office workers that today think writing an Access VBA makes them a .net developer" - by Bucc5062 (856482) on Thursday December 16, @12:14PM (#34575534)
IT/IS/MIS/CIS: It's "what I do" for 17++ yrs. now, professionally (been programming a LOT longer than that though) ...
The languages you're quoted about above?
Those were my introduction to "STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING", via academia @ first too (which is good, you learn it "properly" for a foundation) & PASCAL later on the job, with a LOT of VB (this was my gateway to professional db programming, Delphi was next, into C++ & .NET (currently)).
APK
P.S.=> Still, even today's "Object-Oriented Programming"/OOP world? Hey - I also still use structured programming concepts - you have to imo, because sometimes, you don't ALWAYS NEED an object, & the extra RAM they cost (e.g. - 572 bytes per each newly instanced object in VB6) to instance them is all - Especially if the app's a "smallish" one, lines-wise (sub-1/2 million lines)... apk
n00b
There is a fine line between Cobol and Data entry. I wonder what the data / code ratio is for cobol vs. other languages.
COmmon Business Oriented Language -- do I get a cookie?
no mister Stoddart, but if you play nice at the bingo table and dont start throwing the cards around again you can have an extra cup of apple-sauce with your evening-meds.
Now hurry to the TV area, matlock starts in ten minutes!
People, what a bunch of bastards
You do know that COBOL would outperform your MR by a large margin, don't you?
Map-Reduce is fine for searching and retrieving "a few" records from distributed databases, but it is nearly useless for processing (almost) every record in those databases. Coincidentally, that is precisely the strongpoint of COBOL.
Don't dismiss old technology just because you don't have experience with it. There really isn't much new in IT since the seventies. Hypes come and go but the science is almost unchanged.
Yes, compared to today's languages (or even languages of the '80's), COBOL is a joke. If it were released today, it would be quite correctly derided as a pathetic attempt at "Natural Language Programming." You'd earn a lousy grade if you put it together as part of a language design class.
However, waayyyy back in the Stone Ages of computing when it was developed, it was a stroke of absolute genius. Combined with FORTRAN, it made computers useful for both scientific and business work, and freed programming from the tyranny of rare, and highly-trained, programmers; a reasonably intelligent schmoe could be taught programming in a relatively short span of time. We've learned a LOT since then, but beating up on COBOL for being a bad language compared with the languages of today is like beating up on a PC-XT for not having a 1TB hard drive.
OpenCOBOL works fine on Debian.... once you have sanded down these rough bits:
Edit ld.so: /etc/ld.so.conf
sudo gedit
and add /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf /usr/local/lib
'/usr/local/lib'
to the file.
eg:
include
Create symbolic link to ncurses: /lib/libncurses.so.5.7 /lib/libncurses.so
sudo ln
Re-run ld config:
sudo ldconfig
Now you can compile the COBOL source:
cobc -x COBOL1.COB
and run: ./COBOL1
I turned 17 an hour ago - and I immediately deciphered it - WTH am I supposed to say?
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.