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COBOL is 50 years young

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Even if you are a 'semi-literate' in the languages of computing, you would be familiar with COBOL. And the venerable computer language, which was invented much before the IT revolutions that we are witnessing today, turned 50 on Thursday.

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It was exactly 50 years ago, on May 28, 1959, that a Short Range Committee was established at a meeting at the Pentagon and chaired by Joseph Wegstein of the US National Bureau of Standards, it was this Short Range Committee that would soon create the very first description of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language).

But even today there are two hundred times as many COBOL transactions as there are Google searches every day, says COBOL specialists Micro Focus, a provider of enterprise application management and modernization solutions.

According to a research commissioned by Micro Focus, even today it continues to support our everyday lives and plays a pivotal role in running most of the world’s businesses and public services, said a press release.

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COBOL powers almost all ATM transactions globally, runs nearly three quarters of the world’s business applications, and books hundreds of holidays every single day, the release said. Whenever a financial transaction is made of any kind – from a consumer buying a DVD online to a multinational corporation transferring funds to its suppliers – COBOL will most likely be involved.

According to analyst estimates, 60-80 percent of the world’s enterprises still rely on COBOL to run their business, said Micro Focus.

“There is understood to be over 200 billion lines of COBOL code in existence, with hundreds more being created every single day and the language supports over 30 billion transactions per day – many of which impact our lives every day,” said Ashish Masand, Country Manager, Micro Focus India.

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The research conducted by Micro Focus in the UK with 1,993 adults found that people interact with COBOL at least ten times throughout the course of an average working day. Yet, despite using the technology so often, only 18 per cent of those surveyed had ever actually heard of COBOL, the release added. Additionally, equivalent research conducted by Micro Focus in the US showed the average American relies on COBOL at least 13 times per day.

“COBOL emerged at the very birth of the computer industry, yet despite the attempts made by numerous other languages’ to steal its crown, none have proved to be as well-suited to their tasks as COBOL,” added Ashish.

“It predates the microprocessor by a whole decade (1969), and was already running the bulk of the world’s biggest businesses before the likes of Microsoft (1975), Apple (1976) and Oracle (1977) had even been established. The founders of Google, arguably the most pervasive of modern technologies, were mere toddlers at this time, yet COBOL’s robustness, core performance and ability to adapt to newer technologies means there are still 200 times more COBOL transactions every day than searches on Google itself,” he said.

And that is what makes COBOL a great language in the words of Jan Stuart, a COBOL programmer since 1978. “COBOL is just a great language for business and it isn't going away. It has kept me in steady employment for many decades, but despite retiring, I’m in as much demand as ever,” he says.

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