4 ms·

Brush up your COBOL: Why is a 60 year old language suddenly in demand?

28 points by wyclif 7y ago

edoceo 7y ago
Amazing these "dead" languages I first sorta-learned in the 80 - before being guided to Basic and C (and Foxpro). It's similar now to how folks need me to maintain their "ancient" Perl or PHP apps they just cannot find time to rebuild.
- idiocrat 7y ago
  A parable I recall sometimes. In Europe the grandfather has worked all his life to build a house, which will last for generations. The father has worked all his life to buy a car, which will last for generations. And the son is working with the aim to buy a yacht. But in Japan each generation is working all life to re-build a house, which lasts only one generation.
tzmudzin 7y ago
For anyone criticizing COBOL for inducing alleged brain damage: yes, it is an old language, but it's a domain-specific language. The use case was processing of record-based inputs in an administrative context, based on a technology millions of times less powerful than current hardware, yet still able to sustain a massive administration (old-school banking, anyone?) No, you will not write a compiler or a kernel module in COBOL, just like you won't write it in SQL, APL or Matlab. But for the purpose it was built for, you'll be a lot more comfortable than in most alternatives.
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  Funny note, but Aaron Hsu just wrote a pretty impressive APL-> GPU compiler for his dissertation. It's been discussed on HN a few times. Your point still stands though.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  Actually, it could be an interesting exercise to write a non-trivial program in the original version of COBOL (or BASIC or FORTRAN); indeed, the people who created these now “old” languages were not stupid; rather, they had specific design criteria in mind, and the languages were constructed to fit those criteria. However “brain-damaged” these languages may seem today compared to more recent alternatives, I also think that an average student or an office worker would have a much better chance to casually learn programming in one of these simple “old” languages to a degree which would make the skill useful to them in their daily tasks, than to try, and fail, to attain practical level of command of, say, Python or JavaScript.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  > you'll be a lot more comfortable than in most alternatives. That certainly wasn't on display here. The equivalent Java program (to use everyone's favorite punching bag) would be a tenth the length. The value of SQL is easily demonstrated in a blog entry of less than 500 words. Now that I've had this introduction, I can't imagine ever thinking "oh this would be a great place to use COBOL!" Fantastic and educational article, however.
  - tzmudzin 7y ago
    > The equivalent Java program (to use everyone's favorite punching bag) would be a tenth the length. Not if you started dealing with real-life record format specifications, including fixed-precision numbers for currency, dates etc.
    - stickfigure 7y ago
      Yes, really. Every one of the dozen languages I've worked in professionally has support for fixed precision numbers. Processing structured records of data is a thoroughly solved problem.
      - tzmudzin 7y ago
        We can debate and dispute this, but I'd rather propose: take a closer look at how this is handled in COBOL, and you'll re-evaluate. In shortest words: variable declaration is also used as I/O format specification. Pretty much all of IO is just reading into a buffer, and the values are automatically mapped for your use. Sure you can use the same method in pretty much every general-purpose language (mapping C structs etc), but here it comes just natural.
        stickfigure 7y ago
        How about an example? Present a short COBOL program that is actually more concise than a (say) Java program? The example presented in this blog article seems a likely candidate, and yet would be much shorter in modern languages. If you want to make the case that COBOL is still a good DSL for its niche (report generation?), it seems like there should be some straightforward examples. This is super easy to do with the aforementioned SQL or Matlab.
solidsnack9000 7y ago
There wasn't much coverage on how to make big bucks with COBOL :/
pensatoio 7y ago
I’m not sure if I should feel bad about it, but I have no sympathy for any institution still using this dead language. Our field evolves quickly. Cast aspersions on the issues of our field today all you want - fragmentation and trend-chasing are big problems, but the argument, “well it was built to last, and look, it’s still running,” doesn’t excuse the horrible waste that comes from trying to maintain this ancient stack instead of taking a level-headed approach and investing appropriately in modern, stable technologies.
bobbydreamer 7y ago
Brushing up COBOL skills. Once there were lots of projects which lots of IT companies took, to migrate from COBOL to JAVA, some were successful and some went back. COBOL is verbose, feels like writing English essay. Programs are huge todo, Java can reduce 25%-50% of code sometimes, python can reduce 90%(pythonic). What stands out, newer versions of COBOL will be upgraded and that old code will still work. New version is COBOL 6 : https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/cobol-v61-was-announced-whats-new https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/cobol-v61-was-announced-wh... I won't be surprised as IBM has bought redhat, now you can execute python programs in mainframe. Why not do all that machine learning ans be close to data instead of migrating to Hadoop.

28 points by wyclif 7y ago

Amazing these "dead" languages I first sorta-learned in the 80 - before being guided to Basic and C (and Foxpro). It's similar now to how folks need me to maintain their "ancient" Perl or PHP apps they just cannot find time to rebuild.

idiocrat 7y ago
A parable I recall sometimes. In Europe the grandfather has worked all his life to build a house, which will last for generations. The father has worked all his life to buy a car, which will last for generations. And the son is working with the aim to buy a yacht. But in Japan each generation is working all life to re-build a house, which lasts only one generation.

tzmudzin 7y ago

For anyone criticizing COBOL for inducing alleged brain damage: yes, it is an old language, but it's a domain-specific language. The use case was processing of record-based inputs in an administrative context, based on a technology millions of times less powerful than current hardware, yet still able to sustain a massive administration (old-school banking, anyone?) No, you will not write a compiler or a kernel module in COBOL, just like you won't write it in SQL, APL or Matlab. But for the purpose it was built for, you'll be a lot more comfortable than in most alternatives.

7thaccount 7y ago
Funny note, but Aaron Hsu just wrote a pretty impressive APL-> GPU compiler for his dissertation. It's been discussed on HN a few times. Your point still stands though.
Koshkin 7y ago
Actually, it could be an interesting exercise to write a non-trivial program in the original version of COBOL (or BASIC or FORTRAN); indeed, the people who created these now “old” languages were not stupid; rather, they had specific design criteria in mind, and the languages were constructed to fit those criteria. However “brain-damaged” these languages may seem today compared to more recent alternatives, I also think that an average student or an office worker would have a much better chance to casually learn programming in one of these simple “old” languages to a degree which would make the skill useful to them in their daily tasks, than to try, and fail, to attain practical level of command of, say, Python or JavaScript.
stickfigure 7y ago
> you'll be a lot more comfortable than in most alternatives. That certainly wasn't on display here. The equivalent Java program (to use everyone's favorite punching bag) would be a tenth the length. The value of SQL is easily demonstrated in a blog entry of less than 500 words. Now that I've had this introduction, I can't imagine ever thinking "oh this would be a great place to use COBOL!" Fantastic and educational article, however.
- tzmudzin 7y ago
  > The equivalent Java program (to use everyone's favorite punching bag) would be a tenth the length. Not if you started dealing with real-life record format specifications, including fixed-precision numbers for currency, dates etc.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    Yes, really. Every one of the dozen languages I've worked in professionally has support for fixed precision numbers. Processing structured records of data is a thoroughly solved problem.
    - tzmudzin 7y ago
      We can debate and dispute this, but I'd rather propose: take a closer look at how this is handled in COBOL, and you'll re-evaluate. In shortest words: variable declaration is also used as I/O format specification. Pretty much all of IO is just reading into a buffer, and the values are automatically mapped for your use. Sure you can use the same method in pretty much every general-purpose language (mapping C structs etc), but here it comes just natural.
      - stickfigure 7y ago
        How about an example? Present a short COBOL program that is actually more concise than a (say) Java program? The example presented in this blog article seems a likely candidate, and yet would be much shorter in modern languages. If you want to make the case that COBOL is still a good DSL for its niche (report generation?), it seems like there should be some straightforward examples. This is super easy to do with the aforementioned SQL or Matlab.

solidsnack9000 7y ago

There wasn't much coverage on how to make big bucks with COBOL :/

pensatoio 7y ago

I’m not sure if I should feel bad about it, but I have no sympathy for any institution still using this dead language. Our field evolves quickly. Cast aspersions on the issues of our field today all you want - fragmentation and trend-chasing are big problems, but the argument, “well it was built to last, and look, it’s still running,” doesn’t excuse the horrible waste that comes from trying to maintain this ancient stack instead of taking a level-headed approach and investing appropriately in modern, stable technologies.

bobbydreamer 7y ago

Brushing up COBOL skills. Once there were lots of projects which lots of IT companies took, to migrate from COBOL to JAVA, some were successful and some went back. COBOL is verbose, feels like writing English essay. Programs are huge todo, Java can reduce 25%-50% of code sometimes, python can reduce 90%(pythonic). What stands out, newer versions of COBOL will be upgraded and that old code will still work. New version is COBOL 6 : https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/cobol-v61-was-announced-whats-new https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/cobol-v61-was-announced-wh... I won't be surprised as IBM has bought redhat, now you can execute python programs in mainframe. Why not do all that machine learning ans be close to data instead of migrating to Hadoop.