{"id":6314,"date":"2019-09-13T15:30:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T15:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/?p=6314"},"modified":"2023-06-21T11:42:54","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T11:42:54","slug":"cobol-turns-60-and-still-kicking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/cobol-turns-60-and-still-kicking\/","title":{"rendered":"COBOL turns 60, and still kicking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>COBOL is 60 years old this month, and is still going strong in a surprising range of organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"gtech-migrated-from-ad-inserter-placement-2\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"gtech-2802370300\"><div style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto;text-align: center;\" id=\"gtech-3411695987\"><a data-bid=\"1\" data-no-instant=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/linkout\/76065\" rel=\"noopener\" class=\"notrack\" aria-label=\"26002\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2025\/10\/26002.jpg\" alt=\"\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2025\/10\/26002.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2025\/10\/26002-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\"  style=\"display: inline-block;\" \/><\/a><\/div><\/div><p>COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) was developed based on the  work of a committee made up of computer users and manufacturers who  formed the Short Range Committee of the Conference on Data Systems  Languages (CODASYL) with the aim of developing a universal language that  would replace the vendor-specific examples such as UNIVAC FLOW-MATIC  (the brainchild of pioneer Grace Hopper), or IBM Commercial Translator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>COBOL commands were written to look like English, even for assignments, so you&#8217;d write commands such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><code>Move Income To Total Subtract Expenses <\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was aimed at business use, and the handling of record-based \ninformation, but according to Grace Hopper in a lecture in 1981,&nbsp;from \nthe beginning there were rumors that COBOL was dying. She said that one \nof the people working with her on COBOL went as far as commissioning a \ngranite tombstone with the name &#8216;COBOL&#8217; inscribed on it, and had sent it\n to Charles A. Phillips, Director of the Data System Research Staff at \nthe Pentagon.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was aimed at business use, and the handling of record-based  information, but according to Grace Hopper in a lecture in 1981,\u00a0from  the beginning there were rumors that COBOL was dying. She said that one  of the people working with her on COBOL went as far as commissioning a  granite tombstone with the name &#8216;COBOL&#8217; inscribed on it, and had sent it  to Charles A. Phillips, Director of the Data System Research Staff at  the Pentagon.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube alignwide wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Grace Hopper Lecture\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZR0ujwlvbkQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.i-programmer.info\/history\/computer-languages\/472-part-2-the-1960s.html?start=2\">anecdote was confirmed<\/a>\u00a0on  COBOL&#8217;s 25th anniversary when\u00a0Howard Bromberg confirmed he was the  perpetrator of the prank and the tombstone remains in the Computer  History Museum.<\/p><div class=\"gtech-mid-cont\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"gtech-1612555993\"><div style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto;text-align: center;\" id=\"gtech-2008343390\"><a data-bid=\"1\" data-no-instant=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/linkout\/17207\" rel=\"noopener\" class=\"notrack\" aria-label=\"26001\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2023\/01\/26001.jpeg\" alt=\"\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2023\/01\/26001.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2023\/01\/26001-768x960.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" width=\"500\" height=\"625\"  style=\"display: inline-block;\" \/><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite this early gloom, COBOL is still going strong. The list of \norganizations still using COBOL is impressive; as late as 2016 the \nDepartment of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration \nwere both sitll using COBOL, along with 90% of Fortune 500 companies. \nMost ATMs still run on COBOL or its CICs derivative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Micro Focus, who produce one of the main current versions of COBOL, \nsays that the language is still being used in 70 percent of global \ntransaction processing systems. The company estimates that 220 billion \nlines of COBOL are in use today, with an additional 5 billion lines in \nnew code added each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Derek Britton, Micro Focus&#8217; global director of product marketing, application modernization, and connectivity, said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Any<em> time you phone a call center, \ntransfer money, check your account, or when you contact a government \ndepartment, or ship a parcel, you are interacting with COBOL.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Few COBOL systems face the modern world directly; they have modern \ninterfaces that collect the data and present that data in the format the\n underlying COBOL program requires. In many cases, it would be just too \nexpensive and problematic to redevelop the COBOL in a more modern \nlanguage, and wouldn&#8217;t necessarily provide any business benefit to the \norganization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My first real job as a programmer was writing COBOL for an IBM 360,  and even back in those dim mists of time people were forecasting the  imminent death of\u00a0COBOL in favor of more flexible languages. It&#8217;s good  to see it&#8217;s still clinging on.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More Information<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microfocus.com\/en-us\/assets\/application-modernization-and-collaboration\/cobol-at-60-a-living-legend\/\">MicroFocus COBOL at 60 Whitepaper<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n<div class=\"gtech-end-cont\" id=\"gtech-2865778241\"><div style=\"margin-right: auto;margin-left: auto;text-align: center;\" id=\"gtech-4241258315\"><a data-bid=\"1\" data-no-instant=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/linkout\/75343\" rel=\"noopener\" class=\"notrack\" aria-label=\"jesdphis\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2025\/08\/jesdphis.avif\" alt=\"\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2025\/08\/jesdphis.avif 1179w, https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/media\/2025\/08\/jesdphis-768x950.avif 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1179px) 100vw, 1179px\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"  style=\"display: inline-block;\" \/><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>COBOL is 60 years old this month, and is still going strong in a surprising range of organizations. COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) was developed based on the work of a committee made up of computer users and manufacturers who formed the Short Range Committee of the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) with the aim [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1915],"tags":[995,996,6],"class_list":["post-6314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ndocs","tag-cobol","tag-computer-language","tag-programming"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}