How Much Do You Know About COBOL?

Whether you love it or hate it, COBOL has been around for a long time, its impact lingering even as its popularity wanes. Created by committee way back in the middle of the last century, COBOL was one of the first high-level computer languages and the business community’s most used computer language for decades. 
COBOL apologists praise it for its simple, explicit syntax, while one of its detractors famously lambasted it for “crippling the mind.” Wherever you fall on this spectrum, if you’re involved with mainframes, you’re going to encounter COBOL. Take our quiz to see how well you know your COBOL trivia!

Here’s this week’s Trivia Challenge:

1. What does COBOL stand for?

 Common Business Operational Language

 Computer Business Oriented Language

 Computer Basic Operational Language

 Common Business Oriented Language

2. COBOL was partly based on which programming language:

 FORTRAN

 FLOW-MATIC

 Short Code

 LISP

3. Which organization was most closely associated with the creation of COBOL?

 US Department of Defense

 IBM

 University of Manchester

 Argonne National Laboratory

4. In what year was COBOL first introduced?

 1952

 1954

 1959

 1962

5. Which of these names is associated with the creation of COBOL?

 John Backus

 Grace Hopper

 Alick Glennie

 John McCarthy

6. Which of these were considered as a name for the new language eventually called COBOL?

 BUSY (Business System)

 INFOSYL (Information System Language)

 COCOSYL (Common Computer Systems Language)

 BUSY and INFOSYL

 All of the above

7. What percentage of in-person banking transactions are built on COBOL?

 75%

 80%

 85%

 95%

8. What percentage of ATM banking transactions rely on COBOL?

 75%

 80%

 85%

 95%

9. COBOL is used to run unemployment insurance programs in how many states?

 10

 16

 22

 31

10. Today’s IBM mainframe COBOL now supports JAVA, JSON and XML

 True

 False

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