COBOL
By
PATRICK MWIMANZI
ASR-CESI
WHAT IS
COBOL?
COBOL or
Common Business-Oriented
Language
Compiled English-like computer
language designed for business
File Extension : cbl, cob and cpy
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Brief History
In the 1950s, wen enterprises in the
western world grew, there was a need
to automate procedures for ease
operation.
Which led to the development of high-
level programming language for
commercial data processing: “COBOL”
Created by CODASYL in 1959 (first
version ever)
The creation of COBOL was
intended to achieve two key
goals: portability and readability
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ALTERNATIVES TO COBOL
The best alternative to COBOL depends on the specific use
case:
JAVA PYTHON C# RUBY
4
COBOL PYTHON
Is easier than python: Python
sacrifices
In terms of coding WHY COBOL readability for
readability, self- WILL NEVER brevity
Python is more
documentation, and DIE modern, scalable
ease to use
It is like a
programmer
tells the
computer what
to do step by
step
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COBOL CODE
PYTHON CODE
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BUT Really : Why cobol will never die?
Manage large amounts of data than other language
To be a programmer in COBOL demands a strong understanding of machine languages =>
big problem
Companies (most natably insurance agencies, banking industries, and the government
sector) are held hostages by COBOL
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The average age of a COBOL developer is between 45 and 55
years
Now over 800 billion lines of COBOL in daily use, quite impossible
for campanies today to rewrite them using a more modern
programming language.
Not only there is no documentation but also rewriting these
critical business logic and operations (as an example: transactions,
bank records, and interest calculations) is a massive project and very
expensive and quite impossible.
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COBOL, in and of itself, once revolutionized the
business industry, and is by no means a “bad
programming language.”
But the reality is =>
Despite all negative things I said below:
COBOL code is unlikely to be removed
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THANK
YOU
OR NOT
