By Sonja Soderlund
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:
What does COBOL stand for?
- Common Business Operational Language
- Computer Business Oriented Language
- Computer Basic Operational Language
- Common Business Oriented Language
Click to Reveal Answer
D: Common Business Oriented Language
COBOL was partly based on which programming language:
- FORTRAN
- FLOW-MATIC
- Short Code
- LISP
Click to Reveal Answer
B: FLOW-MATIC
Which organization was most closely associated with the creation of COBOL?
- US Department of Defense
- IBM
- University of Manchester
- Argonne National Laboratory
Click to Reveal Answer
A: US Department of Defense
In what year was COBOL first introduced?
- 1952
- 1954
- 1959
- 1962
Click to Reveal Answer
C: 1959
Which of these names is associated with the creation of COBOL?
- John Backus
- Grace Hopper
- Alick Glennie
- John McCarthy
Click to Reveal Answer
B: Grace Hopper
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
Click to Reveal Answer
E: All of the above
What percentage of in-person banking transactions are built on COBOL?
- 75
- 80
- 85
- 95
Click to Reveal Answer
B: 80
What percentage of ATM banking transactions rely on COBOL?
- 75
- 80
- 85
- 95
Click to Reveal Answer
D: 95
COBOL is used to run unemployment insurance programs in how many states?
- 10
- 16
- 22
- 31
Click to Reveal Answer
B: 16
Today’s IBM mainframe COBOL now supports JAVA, JSON and XML
- True
- False
Click to Reveal Answer
A: True