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whm1974 wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

I thought COBOL was completely phased out in the early 2000s?

Not only has it not been phased out, many university CompSci curricula still include it.

From page 263 of the Northern Illinois University Course Catalog for the 2016-2017 academic year:

250. COMPUTER PROGRAMMING IN COBOL (4). A laboratory
course in computer programming using the COBOL language.
Emphasis on applications which require data management and the
solution of problems involving evaluation of large amounts of data.
Extensive laboratory work. Not available for credit to students with
credit in CSCI 360. PRQ: MATH 110 or consent of department.

Why in hell is COBOL still in use? Don't we have more modern languages to replace it?

Billions of lines of legacy COBOL code still in use is why. Someone still needs to maintain and enhance those applications, and it is too costly to rewrite it all in a more modern language.

You seem to enjoy messing around with some of the less popular Linux distros; why not some of the less popular (these days) programming languages too? The Debian/Ubuntu repositories include a COBOL compiler; go for it!

just brew it! wrote:

captaintrav wrote:

I almost forgot, does it top everything that I still work for an outfit that's using Lotus Notes?

Still use it in my workplace too. Hardly anyone uses e-mail for anything important as a result. Everyone just uses Slack for everything now.

I wish, something like Slack would not ever pass our security and privacy requirements.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Not only has it not been phased out, many university CompSci curricula still include it.

From page 263 of the Northern Illinois University Course Catalog for the 2016-2017 academic year:

Why in hell is COBOL still in use? Don't we have more modern languages to replace it?

Billions of lines of legacy COBOL code still in use is why. Someone still needs to maintain and enhance those applications, and it is too costly to rewrite it all in a more modern language.

You seem to enjoy messing around with some of the less popular Linux distros; why not some of the less popular (these days) programming languages too? The Debian/Ubuntu repositories include a COBOL compiler; go for it!

I suppose I should have learn COBOL back in the 90's and made a fairly decent living maintaining code older then I am, but at the time I sneered at using old fossils in dire need of replacement.

whm1974 wrote:

Why in hell is COBOL still in use? Don't we have more modern languages to replace it?

Better question: why does it need replaced?

Glorious wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Why in hell is COBOL still in use? Don't we have more modern languages to replace it?

Better question: why does it need replaced?

Because it was first developed in the 50's/60's?

How long has it been since you were "developed"? I think we should replace you.

whm1974 wrote:

Glorious wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Why in hell is COBOL still in use? Don't we have more modern languages to replace it?

Better question: why does it need replaced?

Because it was first developed in the 50's/60's?

So what?

It does what it was designed for well, and there are billions of dollars invested in development and testing of existing COBOL code. All the companies still running COBOL code should throw all of that out and start over just because the language has been around longer than most of the people on this forum? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Edit: Development of UNIX (on which the Linux CLI and system calls were modeled) started in the 1960s too. Maybe we should throw Linux out and start over, since it is based on "old" tech?

Redocbew wrote:

How long has it been since you were "developed"? I think we should replace you.

When I end up in a nursing home then yes it is time to replace me.

whm1974 wrote:

Redocbew wrote:

How long has it been since you were "developed"? I think we should replace you.

When I end up in a nursing home then yes it is time to replace me.

COBOL is far from being ready for the nursing home. It is more like that quiet middle-aged guy in the accounting department who has been there for decades and that almost everyone takes for granted, but without whom the business would cease to operate smoothly.

The thing is, languages have a way of keeping their faculties in order better than we do. Programming languages never really die they just fade from popularity.

Old languages get "reborn", too. Visual Basic may not have much resemblance to its forebear, but it's still pretty popular. Informix 4GL runs on everything from mainframes to mobile phones.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Old languages get "reborn", too. Visual Basic may not have much resemblance to its forebear, but it's still pretty popular. Informix 4GL runs on everything from mainframes to mobile phones.

VB is another language that I thought had died out...

Again, you've gotta get over the idea of "died out" on any language. Give it a modern platform to run in and it's fine. Too much money and time invested in apps to just discard them.

Lisp (invented in the 1950s) is still alive and well too.

https://xkcd.com/224/
https://xkcd.com/297/

derFunkenstein wrote:

Again, you've gotta get over the idea of "died out" on any language. Give it a modern platform to run in and it's fine. Too much money and time invested in apps to just discard them.

just brew it! wrote:

Lisp (invented in the 1950s) is still alive and well too.

https://xkcd.com/224/
https://xkcd.com/297/

OK guys I'll get over the "It's old so its time for to it be replaced" mantra I have been following for last 20 plus years.

just brew it! wrote:

Lisp (invented in the 1950s) is still alive and well too.

https://xkcd.com/224/
https://xkcd.com/297/

Next thing you know, someone will take another run at Multics.

Captain Ned wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Lisp (invented in the 1950s) is still alive and well too.

https://xkcd.com/224/
https://xkcd.com/297/

Next thing you know, someone will take another run at Multics.

The OS is still available (under an Open Source license), and someone has written a simulator for one of the mainframes it ran on:
http://multicians.org/simulator.html

Apparently the simulator has even been ported to the Raspberry Pi. (At least one person seems to think that the RPi version is pretty close to the performance of the original Multics on the hardware of the time.)

just brew it! wrote:

Apparently the simulator has even been ported to the Raspberry Pi. (At least one person seems to think that the RPi version is pretty close to the performance of the original Multics on the hardware of the time.)

Is there anything in the Jargon File that is truly dead? I would have thought Multics to be the test case (and you and I are probably the only 2 gerbils to know of its previous existence in the first place).

For those of about 1 to 3 generations after Multics, UNIX was named solely because it wasn't Multics, but did the same things (though not with the strong security built into Multics). Check the Jargon File.

Captain Ned wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Apparently the simulator has even been ported to the Raspberry Pi. (At least one person seems to think that the RPi version is pretty close to the performance of the original Multics on the hardware of the time.)

Is there anything in the Jargon File that is truly dead? I would have thought Multics to be the test case (and you and I are probably the only 2 gerbils to know of its previous existence in the first place).

For those of about 1 to 3 generations after Multics, UNIX was named solely because it wasn't Multics, but did the same things (though not with the strong security built into Multics). Check the Jargon File.

While I knew about it due to knowing UNIX's history. But I didn't know it was still alive and ported to the Raspberry Pi.