Smithsonian Celebrates COBOL's 50th Anniversary With New Site

[Colin McGregor]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Michael Lauzon <mlauzon-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> This is more for the programmers on the list, sadly, I'm not one of
> them, I suck at math, so I know I wouldn't even be able to program.

Math is not central to most programming, logic normally is. I took a
university statistics course several years ago that was a lot of math
between some logic (coding in FORTRAN), by that has not been the norm
in my experience...

Which does bring up the fact that there are a few players even older
than COBOL that are still around, like FORTRAN (which like COBOL has a
following, like where you a have a LOT of math and not much else...).

Colin.

> Anyeverhow, here's a brief excerpt from the site, a link to it will
> follow:
>
> One of the oldest programming languages, COBOL (COmmon
> Business-Oriented Language) turned 50 this past week. On December 6,
> 1960, COBOL was first used on two different makes of computers,
> proving that compatibility across systems could be achieved. To
> celebrate the anniversary, the Smithsonian's National Museum of
> American History built out a new section of their website
> (http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=988&pagekey=989)
> dedicated to documenting the language's history; a related exhibit
> will open at the museum this spring.
>
> "Written initially for the short range, COBOL proved so useful that it
> dominated much of government and business data processing for
> decades," the new website explains. "Millions of banking transactions
> are still processed daily with COBOL programs. As the use of common
> programming languages became standard, a flourishing independent
> computer software industry emerged."
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/smithsonian-celebrates-cobols-50th-anniversary-with-new-website/68101/
>
> --
> Sincerely,
>
> Michael Lauzon
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