In this article about the best developers, we will talk about COBOL, a universal programming language that can be used on any computer. This development changed the management computing of the 1960s.
The History of COBOL
It all began in 1959 when the CODASYL commission (a consortium of computer industries) and the US Department of Defense joined forces to create the universal programming language called COBOL. Inspired by Flow-Matic (by Grace Hopper) and the IBM COMTRAN language (by Bob Bemer), they took only six months to launch the first version of COBOL.
The great response from users and their help made COBOL evolve exponentially, so the commission decided to add new functions that were developed during the early 1960s. And in the late 1960s, the first version for ANSI was released (ANSI is a non-profit organization that oversees the development of standards for products, services, processes, and systems in the United States). It was revised in the mid-1970s (COBOL ANS-74), in 1985 (COBOL ANS-85 or COBOL-ANSI), and this version was expanded in 1992 with mathematical functions. In 2002, they released COBOL ANS-2002.
There are also other versions of COBOL, such as COBOL ENTERPRISE (generally used in host systems), NetCobol (from GT Software), isCOBOL (from Veryant), and the most well-known Visual COBOL.
Features of COBOL
As we mentioned earlier, one of the main characteristics of COBOL is its universality, but it was also endowed with self-documentation capabilities, good file management, and excellent data management (PICTURE statement). Truly, COBOL was ahead of its time in the world of developing business tools (management computing). By using base-10 numbers instead of binary, COBOL avoids rounding errors that are unacceptable in the commercial world.
Its programming language was also pioneering because it was developed to be as close as possible to the English language (avoiding the use of symbols). This technique was later copied by many utilities.
COBOL has been in constant growth since the 1980s, and it has implemented local variables, recursion, dynamic memory allocation, structured programming, object orientation, and a standardized method of generating graphical screens.
Currently, compiler manufacturers are integrating COBOL with the Internet (scripting and web service languages). There are also compilers that allow generating COBOL code for the .NET platform and EJB. So although many of us think COBOL is outdated, large companies such as banks use it to ensure compatibility between modern systems and older developments. Today COBOL continues to be supported and reinvented, which is why the platform remains as relevant as it was in its beginnings.
