3 ms·

We are not standing on the shoulders of COBOL. We are standing on the shoulders of ALGOL and LISP. Those languages influenced everything that came after in ever

We are not standing on the shoulders of COBOL. We are standing on the shoulders of ALGOL and LISP. Those languages influenced everything that came after in every field of computing. COBOL has had little influence outside of its silo. We should absolutely respect the history of our field, but the mere fact that COBOL is old doesn't make it an important part of history.

OGWhales 7y ago
That fact that the many industries, most importantly the financial industry heavily rely on it makes it an important part of history. I agree cobol as a language is not particularly glamorous in terms of what it brought it computer science. I say this as a cobol dev, so I’m laughing, but it’s true: cobol sucks.