The Future of Software is Being Written in … COBOL
The article by Mike Watson on his substack “Product Party” is a nice overview (click the image). It’s got the stats, some history, and some common sense. Well worth a read.
The hopeful AI comments are at least partly true already but there’s
a sizable amount of hopium involved. Eventually the universe is
going to figure out that thousands of lines of business rules are nice
but once in a Science/Math friendly language they’re not going to look
much like Business rules.
Hopeful Anticipation: Integration into GCC 15
Today’s the day the global reviewers do a formal marge of the
gcobol front-end into the official GCC repository. If it
goes reasonably well, we’re millimeters from formal inclusion.
COBOL application modernization is a Business Process
- Inventory
- Identify Opportunities and Challenges
- Upgrade and Re-Compile
- Refactor
- Replatform/Replace as justified
Numbers 2 through 5 are Business as Usual. The inventory should be maintained as a management tool.
