COBOL uses English words and phrases to make it easier for ordinary business users to understand. The language was based on Rear Admiral Grace Hopper's 1940s work on the FLOW-MATIC programming language, which was also largely text
Common business-oriented language (COBOL) is a high-level, English-like, compiled programming language developed specifically for business data processing needs.
Massive COBOL codebases are still in use around the world, many of them running almost exactly as they were when first created. In Hollywood parlance, the COBOL language has “legs.” So, yes, COBOL is still relevant and timely—painfully so, in fact. In recent months COBOL has re-...
COBOL language programs are highly portable since they do not belong to a particular vendor. They can be used in a wide variety of hardware and software and supports most of the existing operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Unix etc. It is a self documented language. Any person with a...
The governor of New Jerseyrecently mentioned COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language. What exactly is it? And why is it still the lynchpin of the financial world, despite the fact that few people still know how to use it? The Origins of COBOL ...
However, one of the biggest issues with COBOL is that despite being designed to be a common language, it isn’t. As the language evolved, many different dialects were created---300 of them! This makes it challenging for programmers to understand legacy code. ...
COBOL(Common Business-Oriented Language); Pascal Fortran assembler In general, modern programming languages support some or all OOP features while non-OOP languages tend to be older or more specialized. Object-based languages Programming languages that use encapsulation and state -- including object-ori...
snippets or full functions, streamlining the coding process by handling repetitive tasks and reducing manual coding. Generative AI can also translate code from one language to another, streamlining code conversion or modernization projects, such as updating legacy applications by translating COBOL to Java...
Pro*COBOL 8.1.5 now allows the call of a subroutine as the action in the WHENEVER statement. The new syntax is: EXEC SQL WHENEVER <condition> DO CALL <subprogram> [USING id1 id2 ... idn] END-EXEC. This new functionality is very useful when writing nested programs. ...
But the mainframe is not another legacy technology, as our dedicated ”What is the Mainframe?” page explains. Similarly, COBOL continues to evolve, and those running mainframe applications often attribute the same values of reliability and trustworthiness to the language used to write them. ...