Re: Boss thinks COBOL leading edge in..

Just my opinion.... In my short (6 years) in data processing I have found that of all of the "high level languages" (COBOL, C, PASCAL....) programming in COBOL tends to be the most productive for the time spent developing. I have in the past year switched from a COBOL only shop to a C only shop and have been sorely disapointed in the development curve of C. It just takes a hell of a lot longer to produce a stable product. I am sure that there are places where this is not true, I am working in an environment where the only tools available are the ones that came out of the UNIX box, or wrote ourselves. I believe that it all boils down to how many external development tools your shop is willing to buy, and what kind of applications you will be writing, COBOL supports the kind of information that businesses tend to use better than most languages do and is best suited for that kind of work. As far as COBOL being dead, most C bigots would be stunned by the ammount of COBOL development going on today. A good guage of what kind of development is going on in what languages is your sunday paper employment section, look at what companies are asking for... I have found that the reason that most developers want to abandon "old" languages has more to do with trendiness and resume building than any real need.