Not 8-bit, but I had a copy Microsoft COBOL back in '84, so I could work on school projects at home, as the college's VAX didn't have remote access. Syntax and structure were close enough (COBOL '74). Later, I used it to do some ports from minicomputer systems, but I don't recall many shops running COBOL exclusively on micros. On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 10:50 AM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Bill Degnan:
It seems like both the SuperPET and Apple /// Cobol were more for prototyping and testing syntax, one would upload their code to a mainframe to put into production. This is for obvious reasons (to me). I worked in a Cobol environment in my early days employed out of college.
What I was asking specifically was, did anyone use Apple /// Cobol back when it was new? I did not get any replies that said, "yup me..".
Bill, I don't quite "buy" the notion you suggest. I'm not hammering you in my reply: I"m providing background to answer the implied "what's up here?" question.
I don't know anything about Commodore Business Machines (CBM) products. But they seem to have been marketed to businesses and schools-for-business, in the 1980's. I am aware, Apple IIs were sold for business use, look at the sales to buy VisiCalc, which was early-implemented on that platform. tandy sold to businesses, look at their Model 16 in particular with the 68000 co-processor; even the z80 models had many business packages. I'm sure Tandy had COBOL but I haven't checked.
What I'm saying, is that there was a substantial and significant "business market" served by early microcomputers. Thus, they supported mainframe computer languages of the day: FORTRAN and COBOL. BASIC has its own history, both as a microcomputing language, and as a language used on timesharing mainframe systems.
But over time, microcomputing for business was done with interactive applications - spreadsheets, database products, word-processing. Users stopped becoming their own "programmers", but everyone used a spreadsheet. In fact, it's an interesting question - when did microcomputer owners STOP becoming "programmers" and simply became end-users? (I think it's interesting....)
But there's no doubt, microcomputers were used for business. Moreso, after and on the IBM PC. Thus it's plausible that microcomputer COBOL was used for business programming on microcomputers. You'd not see those results decades later, except in old advertising of COBOL packages, or among individual old disks from an old collection from some business use (car dealership, accountant, tax preparer, etc.) For business security, those files may have been deleted long ago.
As for "a show of hands". My experience in the 21st century, as a supporter of vintage microcomputing, is that the current (21st C. , Millennial, etc.) hobby microcomputing audience, does not have many people that are 1) from the day in question and 2) were business users in the day. and so, that's one reason why I spent time today, considering the question not answered.
Herb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaze
-- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net