<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hello,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">From the maintenance point of view (and excluding the question of the quality of the system itself) COBOL is often a not so bad choice since it will still probably be available for a long time, several large vendors exists and compatibility is important for the community.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">You need to have money for the licenses, and to manage the risk of loosing knowledge of the system you build, but the technology is not a risk by itself.</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The situation is much worse for other tools from the same period, like RPG (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG</a>), Pacbase (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacbase" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacbase</a>), or custom C implementations : in these cases the technology is not maintained any more or is on low maintenance mode and tomorrow the sole vendor can decide to stop investing in it.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Which means one day you can hit a bug and you can’t do anything: the system rely on a black box you don’t control and there’s nobody any more you can call to solve it.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I don’t know if it’s something that happens outside of IT, or at least on this scale.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Julien</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">Le 7 août 2019 à 12:57, David Eddy <<a href="mailto:deddy@davideddy.com" class="">deddy@davideddy.com</a>> a écrit :</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Bernardo -<br class=""><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><div class="">On Aug 07, 2019, at 6:20 AM, Bernardo Batiz-Lazo <<a href="mailto:b.batiz-lazo@bangor.ac.uk" class="">b.batiz-lazo@bangor.ac.uk</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">have a bunch of stuff in Cobol also written in the 1970s and 1980s.</span></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">If you’re going to pick on deal ol’ COBOL, at least spell it correctly.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">COBOL is an excellent language for what it does…</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Factoids:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">1/ - there are some</div><div class="">- 50 major software languages</div><div class="">- 1,500 minor languages</div><div class="">- a new language is introduced at the rate of one a month.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">2/ - Here’s a URL for some 344 DBMS (database management system) engines:</div><div class="">- <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;" class="">•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span><b style="color: rgb(255, 32, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 24px; text-indent: -14px;" class="">extensive list of 300+ DBMSs <a href="http://db-engines.com/en/rankings" class="">db-engines.com/en/rankings</a></b></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 14px; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><font face="HelveticaNeue" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://www.db-engines.com/en/rankings" class="">https://www.db-engines.com/en/rankings</a></font></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 14px; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;" class=""><font face="HelveticaNeue" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 14px; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><font face="HelveticaNeue" class="">Click on “DB-Engines Rankings” tab to get to list of DBMSs</font></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 14px; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><font face="HelveticaNeue" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 14px; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><font face="HelveticaNeue" class="">- do understand these rankings are based on POPULARITY, not objective usage statistics.</font></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 14px; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><font face="HelveticaNeue" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 14px; text-indent: -14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><font face="HelveticaNeue" class="">- Wow!!!! dBase has moved up to #36 from #39. dBase (</font><a href="http://www.dbase.com/" class="">http://www.dbase.com/</a><font face="HelveticaNeue" class="">) was up to v12, but they’ve changed their branding now to dBase 2019. </font></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">3/ - We have no objective measures for software. Software — clearly a very productive “tool” — is not considered a balance sheet asset. See: Doug Laney’s popular “Infonomics."</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">
<div class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: normal; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none;"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">__________________</div><div class="">David Eddy</div><div class=""><a href="mailto:deddy@davideddy.com" class="">deddy@davideddy.com</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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