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> Substantial custom software development efforts were the norm at large commercial enterprises, until it became obvious that the cost and complexity of develop

> Substantial custom software development efforts were the norm at large commercial enterprises, until it became obvious that the cost and complexity of developing technology was prohibitive Pardon me but this is one of the most bullshit things I've read in a long time. I work for the fortune one. The idea that open source is in any way decreasing is a dangerous lie. I can think of one closed source app that's any good right now. Splunk. Everything else I interact with is garbage that slows our business down. I am shocked that in the same document Oracle is pushing back on technical competence in the government. I shouldn't be but I am. Closed source is the Cobol of a fortune 50. It exists, it's going to be a while before we get off it, and basically nobody is happy to be running Cobol, Oracle, or Tibco.

ams6110 9y ago
COBOL is just a programming language. Many companies used it to develop good sofware for internal use. Of course a lot of pretty bad software was developed with it also, mostly by big consultancies. But the goodness or badness of software doesn't have much to do with what language was used.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > But the goodness or badness of software doesn't have much to do with what language was used. To a certain extent it does. COBOL is in the same category as Visual Basic in the sense that they make it easy for novices to quickly create programs that half work, but getting the other half right then takes far more effort than would have been required when using a better language to begin with. The result is that people using those languages tend to give up at that point and subject the users to their half broken programs.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    Plus the companies still most highly invested in COBOL and VB are likely the same companies that live and die by the sunk cost fallacy. COBOL and VB had nearly as much good as bad in their time, but to some extent the companies with good COBOL or VB programs more often than not have moved on with the times to greener pasture. Meanwhile, it's harder and harder to argue that the companies still using COBOL or VB for core business processes care about investments into good code, and as the good programmers move on to other languages it's hard to argue that much good code is currently written in those languages (except at great expense to retain good programmers in bad situations).
- tedmiston 9y ago
  The bigger concern is the risk inherent in modifying big legacy COBOL projects and their maintainability, if you can even find programmers willing to work on a codebase that old.

ams6110 9y ago

COBOL is just a programming language. Many companies used it to develop good sofware for internal use. Of course a lot of pretty bad software was developed with it also, mostly by big consultancies. But the goodness or badness of software doesn't have much to do with what language was used.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> But the goodness or badness of software doesn't have much to do with what language was used. To a certain extent it does. COBOL is in the same category as Visual Basic in the sense that they make it easy for novices to quickly create programs that half work, but getting the other half right then takes far more effort than would have been required when using a better language to begin with. The result is that people using those languages tend to give up at that point and subject the users to their half broken programs.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Plus the companies still most highly invested in COBOL and VB are likely the same companies that live and die by the sunk cost fallacy. COBOL and VB had nearly as much good as bad in their time, but to some extent the companies with good COBOL or VB programs more often than not have moved on with the times to greener pasture. Meanwhile, it's harder and harder to argue that the companies still using COBOL or VB for core business processes care about investments into good code, and as the good programmers move on to other languages it's hard to argue that much good code is currently written in those languages (except at great expense to retain good programmers in bad situations).
tedmiston 9y ago
The bigger concern is the risk inherent in modifying big legacy COBOL projects and their maintainability, if you can even find programmers willing to work on a codebase that old.