3 ms·
COBOL is the nature of computer science? Couldn't disagree more. It is certainly the nature of the enterprise computing market, though. easy-to-access domain-s
by gruseom 16y ago
COBOL is the nature of computer science? Couldn't disagree more. It is certainly the nature of the enterprise computing market, though.
easy-to-access domain-specific tool that permits technically less savvy people to codify some of their own knowledge
But this is the pipe dream that the OP argues against, that perennially comes up and inevitably fails. Well, to be more precise, it inevitably fails technically. It often succeeds, in the short term, at convincing people who want to be convinced, and those people are sometimes executives who write checks, so there's usually a buck to be made at it if you want to sell vaporware.
(With, of course, the enormous exception of spreadsheets.)
- Vivtek 16y agoIn 1955, COBOL was the cat's pajamas. The fact that you're unimpressed fifty years later - when COBOL is still the most widespread single programming language on the planet - is precisely because it established the very foundations of your world. The "pipe dream" fails because it is implemented by people who honestly believe programmers are superfluous if you just automate them away - people who don't actually know how programming works. Excel being a case in point. Have you ever tried to shoehorn an Excel spreadsheet into an enterprise software maintenance program? It's really hard.
- gruseom 16y agoI wonder if there's a version of Muphry's Law for condescension. I've been impressed with aspects of COBOL. I even wrote Robert Glass to buy hard copies of his detailed defense of it 5 years ago so I could learn more about what made it great. In certain ways COBOL was better than what came later. Nevertheless what you're saying is historically inaccurate: COBOL was never the cat's pajamas of computer science. It was the original success story of manager-driven development, and that is a very different matter.