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Re: XML moves COBOL into the .NET and J2EE arenas

• To: "XML Developers List" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: XML moves COBOL into the .NET and J2EE arenas
• From: "Ken North" <kennorth@s...>
• Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 18:32:06 -0700
• References: <000501c4396d$1c38f5d0$0200a8c0@barry> <000601c439f3$ca7de160$1601a8c0@DURANTE> <6AB49952-A5F2-11D8-AEC8-000A95A51C9E@t...>

> > My point was not that the investment in COBOL is a recent phenomenon,
> > but that it's continuing -- COBOL didn't die in the 80s. There are about 2
> > million COBOL programmers versus 3 million Java and 300,000 Perl.
>
> Where are those numbers from, Ken?

The Java number was from an IDC report, the COBOL figure from a Gartner report
*.

Information Week published a different figure in May 2003. It forecast the
number of Java programmers would equal the number of COBOL programmers by 2004.

> prefers to forget the 100,000 or so lines of COBOL

Some people chose COBOL but more often it was simply a mandate.  Large
corporations, government programs and ISVs working on multi-platform products
were the largest adopters, but I remember one ISV converting a COBOL
bill-of-materials application to 8-bit micros running CP/M.

At the other end of the spectrum was a friend's experience with Y2K remediation
at a large energy company. For taxes alone, she had programmers working on 1500
COBOL programs.

In twenty years, this thread will probably be something like this:

"Our systems are so old, we still have XML documents and parsers."
"That's nothing -- we have COBOL programs."


* Slides with statistics about market share, adoption of various languages,
J2EE, .NET, bio-cybernetics, application servers, and other technologies:
http://www.webservicessummit.com/Trends/ComputingTrends_part2.htm

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: XML moves COBOL into the .NET and J2EE arenas
    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>

• References:
  • RE: XML moves COBOL into the .NET and J2EE arenas
    • From: "BarryTauber" <btauber@i...>
  • Re: XML moves COBOL into the .NET and J2EE arenas
    • From: "Ken North" <kennorth@s...>
  • Re: XML moves COBOL into the .NET and J2EE arenas
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

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