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!