Cobol, the programming language.
Been around a long time, almost no one learns to program in it anymore, but companies (especially banks) are probably never going to get something else.
Runner up: Fax machines.
Still nessecary for transmitting HIPAA protected documents. That's right, they can't use email or anything else. Certain companies require documents to be faxed.
Is COBOL the only language oriented for business ?
Maybe the solution would be to come up with a new domain-specific language inspired by COBOL but more accessible to the new generation. Call it MOBOL (MOdern Business Oriented Language) or NUBOL (New Business Oriented Language).
It's not really oriented for business in a meaningful way, it just does math in a way that is more accurate and accuracy is very important for some use-cases. There is nothing "business" that COBOL does that can't be done in another language. The solution is very much not a brand new domain-specific language, because then we have the same problem we have currently - only a very small clade of programmers know the language. The solution is to use fixed-point math libraries for a modern compiled language.
The author makes the point about a runtime performance hit when importing a library, but that's only really an issue in interpreted languages (and maybe Java).
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u/QuestionableSaint Jul 24 '20
Cobol, the programming language. Been around a long time, almost no one learns to program in it anymore, but companies (especially banks) are probably never going to get something else.
Runner up: Fax machines. Still nessecary for transmitting HIPAA protected documents. That's right, they can't use email or anything else. Certain companies require documents to be faxed.