Something I wish everyone understood about COBOL is… Though developed in 1959, COBOL remains the backbone of numerous mission-critical systems. It provides a level of operational stability that's difficult – if not impossible – to match with newer, less mature...
Inspired by Robert Pirsig's book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Airlines use a specific approach to aircraft maintenance that can serve as a blueprint for legacy application management and budgeting.In this article, I explain why Pirsig’s book is...
During my studies in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), also known as East Germany, I immersed myself in the world of programming languages. My first companions on this journey were PL/1 and the ubiquitous assembler ASM370. Why these two? Well, the...
As COBOL reaches 65 years of loyal service to the IT world, our four-part homage attempts to answer how this veteran IT technology has been successful for so long. The COBOL programming language – which stands for Common Business Oriented Language – began life in...
Its 2024, so how come COBOL is still crunching the numbers for the world economy? Let’s figure it out... In March 2024 I gave a presentation to the UK MainframerZ group—a mainframe user forum—on the topic of COBOL. The organizers had asked for a quick-fire “15 facts...
With the advent of the cloud, artificial intelligence and the advancements in quantum computing, there appears (and it should be stressed that it’s only an ‘appearance’) to be less interest in mainframe computing than some time ago. Over the past few years, especially...
In a recent interview, Amanda Hendley spoke with Scot Nielsen, Director of Product Management at OpenText, discussing talent and training in the mainframe industry and unveiling the inspiration behind their innovative “Learn COBOL in One Day” course. A central...
The IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Migration Assistant (CMA) has been very popular among COBOL migration users. It is a step-by-step wizard and an interactive checklist that guide users through the information along their migration journey from COBOL 4 or earlier to...
