Lords of Cobol, Preserve Us

Glenn Reynolds has a post about the shocking persistence of Cobol, a computer language that was supposed to be dead and buried by now.

Billions of lines of code - with fresh lines written all the time - continue to run vital programs throughout the world, despite the fact that the language has no techie cachet. CS majors try to avoid learning it and certainly try to avoid jobs doing it.

But, somehow, Cobol persists, the dirty language secret of IT.

Glenn approvingly quotes: "The use of Cobol cripples the mind...."

Personally, I don't understand the spread of Cobolphobia. Do they hate it because it looks too easy?

You may denounce me as slime,
but I use it all the time.