The language that Refuses to Die
Tutorials – COBOL
Despite being more than half a century old, COBOL is still in use. Explore this fascinating old-school language and see how it ticks.
New programming languages pop up all the time. In recent years, there's been plenty of hype around Rust, Go, Swift, Clojure, and many others – and often for good reason. These languages have their own plus points and useful features, and many of them are maturing well. Despite hyperbolic claims from certain overzealous fans, however, none of these languages are going to replace C, C++, or Java completely any time soon. Sure, those languages are old and have their limitations, but they're extremely well established, and rewriting large codebases in the current hot language du jour is a mammoth task.
Although C dates back to the early 1970s, there's an even older language that's still in use – albeit to a much lesser extent. COBOL, the common business-oriented language, was created in 1959 by the US Department of Defense (Figure 1) as a portable language that could be used to process data across many different machines and architectures. The language was standardized a few years later, although there are many different dialects. The most recent update to the language specification was COBOL 2014.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
-
Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
-
USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
-
Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.