US Banks rely on a programming language 65 years old!

Here is the article. The headline, as so often happens, hides a much better story:

While tech companies are offering massive salaries to AI engineers, another group of developers is quietly cashing in on a much older skill. Their expertise isn't in artificial intelligence or cutting-edge software. Instead, they work with a programming language that was created in 1959 and still powers some of the world's most critical financial systems.

And that’s the story. Cashing in working on code in this ancient language. That’s our kind of message. “DO COBOL WORK MAKE MONEY!” What’s not to like. Makes it an OK article.

But that headline! Hey US Banks! COBOL 2023 is a thing! GCC COBOL with many of the COBOL 2023 features is a thing. GCC, the portability language platform (C, C++, Fortran, ADA, Go, Rust, and COBOL) that has made adoption of new technologies and features with no significant porting costs. The second edition of COBOL for GCC 16 is just coming out and COBOLworx is working on the third already (performance, performance, performance.) For now it only runs on Linux systems but IBM has extended us use of resources to get it running on z/Series machines in UNIX/Linux modes.

So if you’re looking at an inventory of COBOL programs wondering how to best optimize their value to the business, give us a call! If you have a plan, reach out anyway and see if we can help in some way. We have Support packages for developer and production support. Life is good in COBOL land!