COBOL Celebrates 65 Years

COBOL's Timeless Value

In an IT world obsessed with the latest and greatest innovations, few technologies stand the test of time. But, despite now being a pensionable age, COBOL continues to provide enterprise value, as Ed Airey explores

Is Age Just a Number?

In the USA, the full retirement age (FRA) for Social Security benefits in the United States varies depending on the year you were born. For people born in 1960 or later, the FRA is 67 years old. For those born between 1943 and 1954, the FRA is 66 years old. The FRA was previously 65 for many years, but Congress passed a law in 1983 to gradually increase it due to people living longer and being healthier in older age.

Meanwhile, The State Pension age in the UK is 66 for both men and women, but it is scheduled to increase gradually starting in May 2026. The age will increase to 67 for people born on or after April 1960. Employers used to be able to force workers to retire at 65 (known as the Default Retirement Age), but this law was scrapped in April 2011, following a campaign by the lobby group Age UK.

Elsewhere, 65 remains the median retirement age globally, according to Wikipedia. 

The issues driving this are societal, macroeconomic. But it boils down to the increasing likelihood of more of the population being alive – and able to work – for longer. Both the benefit (their performance as professionals in later life), and the cost (the economic impact of supporting their longer lifespans) have been contributory factors in the rise in retirement age in the recent past on both sides of the Atlantic. 

People are healthier, opportunities are greater, and the job market (generally speaking) is larger. So why not empower them to work for as long as they wish?

Technology Parallels

Another domain where things are lasting longer includes enterprise technology. While some inventions come and go all too quickly, some will stick around far, far longer than anyone could imagine. 

We’ve only recently celebrated the successful 60^th anniversary of the IBM mainframe. In a few years’ time, the infamous suggestion that the mainframe was dead (uttered as far back in time as the 1990s) will be dusted down and laughed at all over again, no doubt. IBM’s revenues and customer base – not to mention the staggering levels of innovation on the platform – will almost certainly guarantee the mainframe’s continued health in 2029 and beyond. 

COBOL: Another one to Shout About

The next example is happening as we speak. At some point in the misty past of September 1959, during a meeting of the CODASYL committee, one member put forward the proposed name for the computer language they were in the middle of developing. The name was COBOL. And it stuck. Later that year the specification was in place, and later the following year a working prototype was tested, heralding the arrival of what would become – by 1970 – the most widely used programming language on the planet. 

And this is despite of the fact that, as reported on COBOL’s wiki page, criticism beset it from as early as June 1960. “It is rather unlikely that cobol will be around by the end of the decade,” said an anonymous critic.

To take a more contemporary pulse, I caught up with regular contributor and long-standing COBOL proponent, Derek Britton, to ask for his perspectives as COBOL reaches its 65^th birthday. 

Letting the Industry Speak

“The IT world is full of opinion and bias, so I wanted to see if I could capture the essence of what COBOL means through the voices of those who use it or help others use it,” explained Derek. His COBOL 65 Guest Book is just that – a simple list of quotes from commentators, organizations and consultants, all answering the question “What has COBOL done for you?”

Perspectives of individuals who have built or consulted on COBOL systems, trained staff, or supported the ecosystem, the guest book reflects the viewpoint of those closest to the action. Topics raised include COBOL’s ease-of-learning, performance, pervasiveness, business-centricity, maintainability, and much more besides. COBOL did all of this – the most pervasive and powerful programming language of its generation, and which continues to run vast swathes of global IT today. The guest book offers a fascinating summary of the language’s profound value to the IT community. Derek’s own quote does a worthy job of summing it up – 

“Built thanks to the brilliance of Grace Hopper, Mary K. Hawes, and Jean Sammet, COBOL was the original open-source project – a meeting of minds to solve an industry puzzle. Since the idea took form in 1959, COBOL quietly grew to be a powerhouse of industrial scale computing, such that it would be hard to imagine the global economy functioning the same without it. Thanks to its simplicity, business suitability, and portability, it achieved all this without fanfare, and without fuss, and continues to underpin big business today. The lack of attention to COBOL’s quiet success means many don’t appreciate its profound continued importance – creating a risk for the future of many of today’s vital IT systems. Yet the answer is simple – education and awareness. It’s time to remind ourselves that COBOL means business, now and forever”. 

The Future of COBOL

That all said, COBOL remains on high alert about the future. At AveriSource, we are no strangers to major modernization programs that require COBOL application to be replaced by newly-constructed, more modular programs written in newer languages. COBOL is not the issue per se, merely how complex the applications have become, and a lack of investment in incumbent skills to maintain the systems. There’s a lot to consider, because COBOL has been the bedrock of organization’s business success for decades, so it is no small decision. 

We’ve talked about some of the issues in the recent past, of course, elsewhere in our blog series.

• The Skills Challenge is not Just about People
• The true cost of standing still
• AI: The Application Modernization Accelerator? 

Whether COBOL will choose to retire anytime soon will depend on the organization, the value it brings, and the strategic choices about its future. It feels like the retirement age may have to change once again, at least for COBOL. 

If you want to make an informed decision about the future of your COBOL systems, get in touch.