> News flash: the C programming language is the most popular language in the world and it’s nearly as old as COBOL. SQL is the backbone of database programming, and it was invented in the 1970s. The age of a technology is no indicator of its viability or appropriateness for solving mission-critical problems.
The big issue with COBOL is developer availability. I can easily find a lot of C programmers to fix and extend my complicated C code base. I can easily find a lot of programmers familiar with SQL to help me fix and improve or change my queries. Finding COBOL programmers is a much harder task and C and SQL programmers.
And it is not about the age of the programming language. My guess is that it would be harder finding PL/1 or Algol 60 programmers even though both of those languages are newer than COBOL.
The big issue with COBOL is developer availability. I can easily find a lot of C programmers to fix and extend my complicated C code base. I can easily find a lot of programmers familiar with SQL to help me fix and improve or change my queries. Finding COBOL programmers is a much harder task and C and SQL programmers.
And it is not about the age of the programming language. My guess is that it would be harder finding PL/1 or Algol 60 programmers even though both of those languages are newer than COBOL.