How is COBOL today?

I finally came across a fair article about COBOL looking at it from a business point of view instead of a technical one. Many IT theorists have been claiming COBOL's death for decades but I believe that the majority of them look at the language as academics.

As Mr. Abraham points out in his article, “[COBOL] is a basic fact of business life.” It is a fundamental tool for business. Many companies that started decades ago have been using it and now COBOL supports their system. Industries like Bank, Insurance, Credit Cards use it effectively and instead of concentrated on changing it, they are trying to integrate it with new tools to increase its power and capabilities.

Today’s concern about COBOL developers retiring and leaving companies helpless may be linked to a different agenda, trying to promoting another languages. I have worked in Portugal and Brazil and I know that there are many young programmers there and a few universities still teach COBOL. However, the majority of the students are not too interested because their professors allege the language is dying or dead.

Related Article

Power Programming Point