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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
by 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 agoPlus 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 agoThe 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.