COBOL@50: Cloud-Enabled and Mobile Friendly

BANGALORE, INDIA: It's very rare that a technological movement stands the test of time — even more rare is that specific innovation is impacting how we not only run our businesses, but also function in our everyday lives. On May 28th, 1959 a group of computer scientists and government officials gathered at the Pentagon to lay down the guidelines for a groundbreaking event — the advent of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language).

Well, while other momentous events have surely taken place at such an historic building, none other had the impact on enterprise technology as this one. Over the following decades, COBOL developed an almost ubiquitous relationship with enterprise IT.

Integrating technology that's fifty years old, with the 21st century is no easy task. One can't, for example, sync their iPod with a gramophone, upload a document to a typewriter or text a friend from a phone box.

Yet much of the technology which underpins the day-to-day running of our financial system is inextricably linked to an innovation which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. Over the past 50 years, more than an estimated 220 billion lines of COBOL code have been created — definitively staking its position as one of the most heavily used enterprise languages.

Changing with time

However, despite these impressive numbers, the popular train of thought is that the language is “dead” or is “dying.” This perception stems from the language being 50 years old, but in reality, programmers should see COBOL as a language that just started 50 years ago. Over the past few decades, COBOL has developed and changed to the point where it is currently cloud-enabled and mobile device friendly.

Yesterday's COBOL features — punch cards, paper tape and big computers — have all disappeared over the course of time. COBOL has modernized to maintain its relevance and just like the telephone became today's iPhone and dictionaries became Dictionary.com, COBOL has been continuously modernized and updated in order remain on the programming forefront.

Though largely unheard of among the millions of people who interact with COBOL on a daily basis, Today COBOL is everywhere. Its reach is so pervasive that it is almost unthinkable that the average person could go a day without it.

Not only is COBOL one of the oldest business programming languages used today, it is also one of the most widely used and tested. When government officials sat around a desk at the Pentagon they aimed to provide a common standard for programmers based on the use of simple, plain English, which simplified the coding process for developers and businesses alike.

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Since COBOL has been a standards-based language since the beginning, it became the established language for business processing and is known for its portability and precision. Programmers appreciate this overall ease of use and it is this basic notion that has helped the language stand the test of time and remain the top application development language.

To underline the language's ease, it was created to make programming more accessible and business-friendly. COBOL was also the first programming language to be based on English words and was designed to resemble human language, rather than garbled machine code. Overall, the programming language has been and remains a cornerstone of business-critical applications and has thrived in multiple computing generations — including the most recent two, the “Dot.com Era,” and “Web 2.0.”

COBOL's presence is not merely felt in one or two niche industries, but rather over the past handful of decades, it has infiltrated almost every key vertical industry in the US. For example, the banking and financial industries are one of the first that embraced computing and as such, its IT roots are set in COBOL because it was the primary language used years ago.

If the language's code were suddenly removed from banking systems, ATMs would cease to dispense cash, credit cards would not be able to process transaction charges and essentially peoples' entire daily routine would be completely disrupted.

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