COBOL, the unassuming technology that has been around since before IT was even a term, is sometimes the subject of a heated state government debate, occasionally makes headlines at industry events, and it was even featured among the top 10 technology topics on an IEEE Twitter poll from 2020. But how did it become a part of the modern zeitgeist?
COBOL is now into its seventh decade of usage as a global programming language and continues to be hugely important as a system language for great swaths of the global economy. Age aside, COBOL’s defining characteristics include running systems of record applications in worldwide organizations; supporting all sectors vital to the global economy including banking, transportation, government, and healthcare; comprising billions of lines of application code worldwide; and remaining ubiquitous in the mainframe world.