COBOL is 50 years old? That's right. It's been 50 years since May 28, 1959, when the first meeting of the committee that would develop the COBOL language convened.
According to expert sources:
- $2 trillion dollars is the total investment in COBOL systems
- 5 billion lines of new COBOL are developed every year
- 80% of all daily business transactions are processed in COBOL
- 70% of all worldwide business data is stored on a Mainframe
- 70% of mission-critical applications are in COBOL
- 15% of all new application functionality will be written in COBOL
- 310 billion lines of software are in use today and 200 billion lines are COBOL (65% of the total software)
- 30 billion transactions per day supported by COBOL
- at least 13 times per day the average American relies on the programming language COBOL for routine activities such as placing phone calls, using a credit or debit card, and commuting to and from work
- on average 90 times per week people use their cell phones, ATM and credit cards, or travel by train. COBOL is the programming language that all of these daily transactions are originally based on
- only one in four survey respondents have heard of COBOL or know what it is
- COBOL is one American icon that has truly stood the test of time, and it will be around for another 50 years running the core transactions our daily lives. COBOL impacts every aspect of our lives - from traffic signals, cash registers and cell phones to online travel reservations
