I'm not sure I'd even say that. While COBOL generally makes me want to vomit, and that's a common position, that's not the point. Organizations are using it for a reason: It's the right tool for their job, based on whatever criteria they've set forth. I really don't think it's up to any of us to assert that they're wrong. But apart from that, what would be the motivation for declaring its obsolescence? I assume the big deal is age. So, what's the cutoff age for modern vs. "obsolete", when it comes to a language? Note that I'm not talking about implementations of the language, but the language itself, as the COBOL compilers in common use today are current, modern, maintained products. C++ is 35 years old, C is 45, Java is about 20 I think. All have seen recent standardization activity, and all have seen recent development in implementations. Just like COBOL. I don't think there's much that's necessarily "new" or "old" about a language for representing and expressing data structures and algorithms, in cases where the language specification has continued to evolve. Yes, newer techniques (object-oriented programming) and newer habits (long identifier names, use of lowercase characters, column independence) come into being, but these languages continue to evolve to take advantage of them. Modern COBOL implements those newer things, specifically, along with many others. Now, ALGOL, on the other hand IS obsolete by any reasonable definition. There has been no standards activities in nearly fifty years, no evolution of compiler technology, no incorporation of newer ideas, and zero (or near-zero) general use. That's what I'd call "obsolete". (sadly, because I actually like ALGOL!) -Dave On 05/22/2017 10:19 AM, Drew Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
If it's not technically obsolete, would you still say it probably /shouldn't/ be used?
On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 5:55 AM, Brian Schenkenberger via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic writes:
On 05/17/2017 07:33 PM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > ..I used cobol when I worked at dupont tso/JCL (Damn autocorrect) > > Cobol is obsolete though. My professional opinion
Your bank statement would disagree with you.
Cobol is *out of fashion*. Obsolete doesn't mean quite the same thing.
I still have customers actively developing their application with COBOL. With extensions in the compiler, they make extensive use of VMS RMS ISAM files. I stil can't make head-or-tails of those damn PIC statements.
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA