Looks like some of us old computer timers (programmers, system developers, etc.) [View all]

will have a job forever more, if we want. This blurb about COBOL being so dominate still, 60 years later, is surprising some (not me). The reason it wasn't surprising to me is that it costs money to come in afterwards, and rewrite code, and some things written in old code still does a better job. Nice to have job security, eh?

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60-year-old programming language understood by fewer and fewer developers underpins many more applications than previously thought, new data suggests.

According to a report from IT modernization company Micro Focus, there are currently more than 800 billion lines of COBOL code in daily use across the globe, roughly three times more than anticipated.

What’s more, almost half of the developers surveyed actually expect the volume of COBOL in their organization to increase over the next twelve months, while a similar proportion say they expect COBOL applications to live on for at least another decade.

COBOL conundrum
The typical narrative surrounding COBOL is that the waning number of developers familiar with the language has the potential to cause significant problems, due to the variety of mission-critical apps it props up in sectors such as government and banking.

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Article in Tech Radar, dated Feb. 4, 2022