Some people call them COBOL Apes, those un-evolved programmers who came to power in the 1970s and continue to cling to the computer language created more than 50 years ago. Well, they may be un-evolved, but we need those Apes, because most of the big mission critical systems of the world still run – and run well – on COBOL.
COBOL – Common Business Oriented Language – was created in 1960 by a team of developers drawn from several computer makers and the Pentagon. Grace Hopper, then a Lieutenant in the Navy, is probably the best-known individual associated with the language.
One advantage of COBOL over older programming languages was its syntax. It was like English, and non-programmers – supervisors, managers, users – could read it. Furthermore, COBOL was portable. A COBOL program written for one kind of computer could run on any other with little if any alteration. And COBOL excelled at the most common kinds of data processing for business: alpha-numeric and simple arithmetic operations performed on huge files of data.
But time passed. Newer, sexier languages arose. People started making fun of COBOL. Universities and tech schools stopped teaching it. Companies decided it was time to replace their old COBOL systems.
Oops.
Those systems were too big, too complex, too integrated into mission critical processes. And they worked too well to replace.
They still do.
The reality is that banks, hospitals, manufacturing businesses, insurance companies, retail chains, the U.S. military – in fact, every sort of organization you can imagine – rely on COBOL to keep running. COBOL code written thirty years ago or more, modified and fine-tuned over the decades, is doing an outstanding job of keeping the wheels of commerce turning. Billions of lines of COBOL code (one estimate places the number at 220 billion) operate behind the scenes to make our modern world possible. Replacing all that code would be a financial nightmare.
So what do we do? Recognize that COBOL may indeed outlive us all, say experts. If you’re lucky enough to have a few COBOL Apes in your organization, take care of them. Of course, they’re probably all Boomers, so they won’t be around forever. Encourage your IT staff to add COBOL programming to their skill set.
And if you’re a young programmer who teethed on Java and eats C# and .NET for breakfast, stop making fun of those Apes. Learn COBOL. It might just be your ticket for future job security.