Electronics & Technology
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COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) was first designed by a committee of
computer scientists and industry representatives in 1959, headed by
CODASYL. This group was led
by Grace Hopper,
a pioneer in computer programming who is often referred to as the "Mother of COBOL."
COBOL was designed to be a high-level programming language that could be used for
business and financial applications, and it quickly gained popularity in the 1960s
and 1970s as the business world began to rely more heavily on computers.
COBOL was originally developed by a consortium of computer companies, including
IBM, Burroughs Corporation, and Honeywell. These companies saw the potential for
a standard business programming language that could be used across different hardware
platforms, and they worked together to develop COBOL as an open standard.
One of the biggest challenges associated with COBOL was the Y2K (Year 2000) problem.
As mentioned earlier, many computer systems used two-digit year codes to represent
dates, with the assumption that the first two digits were always "19". This meant
that when the year 2000 arrived, these systems would interpret the year 2000 as
"00", leading to potential errors and system crashes.
The Y2K problem was particularly acute in COBOL systems, as COBOL was widely
used in legacy systems that had been in place for many years. As a result, many
programmers were required to go back and manually update these systems to avoid
the Y2K problem. While some predicted widespread disasters and failures, the issue
was mostly mitigated through significant efforts by the software industry.
Today, COBOL is still used in many critical systems, such as financial and government
institutions, where reliability and stability are critical. Despite its age, COBOL
remains an essential language for many industries, and will likely continue to be
used in legacy systems for years to come.
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