COBOL pronounced bread and butter
I've worked in COBOL for 40 years and there is not much you can't do with it. Still developing tons of software using it. Also did CICS and IBM BAL assembler.
One thing I have noticed about these obsolete dinosaur languages that the young pups want to abolish: NONE of the IT disasters you hear about are written in these languages. And much more software is written in them than in the C like languages,
Yeah, they are not much fun like java and all those. But, young fellas, pay is for WORK not having FUN grinding out code. That was a lesson us dinosaurs learned right off.
Also business apps should be written in a business like language that even the original requestor can read and understand. The bracketed gobbley gook that is the C like languages is indecipherable to anyone but programmers.
Well, Python excepted because its my favorite of that kind because it is the clearest.
What everyone today seems to overlook is that software is a very valuable asset and should be as easy as possible to maintain. It WILL be modified and have functionality added if it is any good.
And my COBOL programs are NEVER spaghetti code. They are so clear any fool can understand them with copious comments in case there are any questions.
Report archive programs I wrote 20 years ago still run every day in Europe, Asia, America and have never gone down even once. Well, maybe once, but that's it.
It is the skill of the artisan that determines the end result not the tools used.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
