
Built to Last (COBOL in 2020) - jefurii
https://logicmag.io/care/built-to-last/
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cafard
Who knew one could fit so many forms of oppression into an article on a
programming language?

I should say that I find it perfectly reasonable the organizations should
write accounting systems in a language designed for writing accounting
systems, rather than in one designed for porting Space Wars or writing
moderately portable operating systems. However,

"users of COBOL could write the same command as:

MULTIPLY EARNINGS BY TAXRATE GIVING SOCIAL-SECUR ROUNDED.

As you can tell from the COBOL version, but probably not from the FORTRAN
version, this line of code is a (simplified) example of how both languages
could compute a social security payment and round the total to the penny. "

No, actually, I can't tell. Yes, I can infer the social security payment, but
how far rounded I cannot.

I would also say that though COBOL has substantial advantages for those
writing accounting systems, there are many other things one might want to do
with a computer, and for some of them COBOL is just not that good. Like many
people out there, I find myself writing a lot of small programs/scripts to put
crummy data into a usable shape. For this Perl or Python--not great accounting
languages--work very well; my impression is that COBOL wouldn't.

The other point not mentioned is the cost. COBOL vendors' license terms tend
to make Larry Ellison look like Richard Stallman. I guess GNU Cobol may be
good enough to learn on, but I suspect that few take that route.

