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Cobol and It's Creator

by Ethan Slone

What is Colbol

COBOL

COBOL stands for common business-oriented language. It was the first programming language that used english based worlds such as: Display, Compute, Move, and others. The reason COBOL was such a huge deal is because of that simple fact. Instead of having to memorise the usage the symbols, you could just learn the words and their corresponding action. This made programming much more simplier and opened many more doors. Without COBOL, many of our modern day computer languages would be very different.

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper, with no doubt, was one of the most influencial women in history. During world war 2, she attempted to enlist into the military, however, her role as a great mathematician proved to be too important and she was denied. Eventually, however, she was recruited on the Navy Reserves list. From there, she assisted develop the Univac I, proposed the development of an english based coding language stating "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols," she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper's Military Service

Military Service

Grace Hopper was denied service for many reasons starting out. At 34, she was too old, too thin, and had much too of an important job. After graduating top of her class, she was given the rank Lieutenant. "She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken." - Gilbert

After years of service, she finally retired in 1966 after being promoted to Commander. A few years later, she returned yet again and was promoted to Captain. Quite the successful miltiary campaign.

How is Cobol used today?

While COBOL is reaching the end of its shelf life, it has had and still has a place in society today! While the exact amount is unknown, It is estimated that over 300 billion lines on COBOL code still exist today!

Modern day Applications

"Any time you phone a call center, any time you transfer money, or check your account, or pay a mortgage, or renew or get an insurance quote, or when contacting a government department, or shipping a parcel, or ordering some flowers, or buying something online at a whole range of retailers, or booking a vacation, or a flight, or trading stocks, or even checking your favorite baseball team's seasonal statistics, you are interacting with COBOL." - Derek Britton

Does COBOL have a future?

If we are being honest, more than likely not. COBOL is a 60 year old language and new and improved languages are continously coming out. Slowly but surely, large companies are getting rid of COBOL in favor of languages that are being kept up to date. While it may not be used for much longer, we must never forget the impact that it made on the world and doors it's opened. Without COBOL, our languages would not be what we know today.

Cobol's Future

Sources

Bibliography

I did not see any requirements for citing sources so I will be posting the links of the articles I used!

  • https://www.zdnet.com/article/cobol-turns-60-why-it-will-outlive-us-all/

  • https://stories.vassar.edu/2017/assets/images/170706-legacy-of-grace-hopper-hopperpdf.pdf

  • https://freedomafterthesharks.com/2016/06/27/exactly-what-is-cobol-and-why-is-cobol-still-a-widely-used-language-in-it/

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