COBOL is aprogramming language that was developed in the year 1959. It was one of the firstcomputer programming languages. The name COBOL stands forCOmmonBusiness-OrientedLanguage.
COBOL was created because people wanted a language they could use to describe the problems in a way that is independent of the hardware used. LikeSQL COBOL uses asyntax that is close to that of natural languages. As an example,ADD YEARSTO AGE is a valid expression.
There are several different versions of COBOL. The newest is from2002. In general, versions of the language before1985 are not compatible with the newer versions, from 1985 and later.
In his letter to an editor in1975 titled "How do we tell truths that might hurt?", computer scientist andTuring Award recipientEdsger Dijkstra remarked that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."[1] In this letter, Dijkstra also criticised several other languages which were used at the time.
In recent years, COBOL has been extended to allowobject-oriented programming, user-defined functions, and user-defined data types.
Thecomputer scientist Howard E. Tompkins disagreed, and defended structured COBOL: "COBOL programs with convoluted control flow indeed tend to 'cripple the mind'", but this was because "there are too many such business application programs written by programmers that have never had the benefit of structured COBOL taught well...".[2]
