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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
COBOL turns 60: Why it will outlive us all
I cut my programming teeth on IBM 360 Assembler. This shouldn't be anyone's first language. In computing's early years, the only languages were machine and assembler. In those days, computing science really was "science." Clearly, there needed to be an easier language for programming those hulking early mainframes. That language, named in September 1959, became Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL).
The credit for coming up with the basic idea goes not to Grace Hopper, although she contributed to the language and promoted it, but to Mary Hawes. She was a Burroughs Corporation programmer who saw a need for a computer language. In March 1959, Hawes proposed that a new computer language be created. It would have an English-like vocabulary that could be used across different computers to perform basic business tasks.
Hawes talked Hopper and others into creating a vendor-neutral interoperable computer language. Hopper suggested they approach the Department of Defense (DoD) for funding and as a potential customer for the unnamed language. Business IT experts agreed, and in May 1959, 41 computer users and manufacturers met at the Pentagon. There, they formed the Short Range Committee of the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL).
Drawing on earlier business computer languages such as Remington Rand UNIVAC's FLOW-MATIC, which was largely the work of Grace Hopper, and IBM's Commercial Translator, the committee established that COBOL-written programs should resemble ordinary English.
But, even with the support of the DoD, IBM, and UNIVAC, COBOL's path forward wasn't clear. Honeywell proposed its own language, FACT, as the business programming language of the future. For a brief time, it appeared the earlier business developers would be FACT rather than COBOL programmers, but the hardware of the day couldn't support FACT. So, COBOL once more took the lead.
By that September, COBOL's basic syntax was nailed down, and COBOL programs were running by the summer of 1960. In December 1960, COBOL programs proved to be truly interoperable by running on computers from two different vendors. COBOL was on its way to becoming the first truly commercial programming language.
It would still be the business language of choice until well into the 1980s. And it's not done yet.
"While market sizing is difficult to specify with any accuracy, we do know the number of organizations running COBOL systems today is in the tens of thousands. It is impossible to estimate the tens of millions of end users who interface with COBOL-based applications on a daily basis, but the language's reliance is clearly seen with its use in 70 percent of global transaction processing systems."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 06 2019, @08:33PM
Were useful? How about are useful?
Just a couple of years back I was working on a government agency project that would get information from school districts all over that state. Our input format for data to be sent in was fixed record formatted lines of text. This was because it was the lowest common format that could be generated by any school district. From the universities running on mainframes or on racks of Windows or Linux servers, to the poorest and smallest school running things on a Windows 98SE in a corner of some storeroom, this format would work. Most schools would be eventually buying software from some vender to get data from whatever system the school had, to the format the new project needed -- but if a school wanted or had to, they could type up the text file and send it in. Some of them actually do do that, since for very small schools the monthly input might only be 10 or so lines of data.
Sure, this is not all that efficient, but sometimes interoperability across platforms is far more important.