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Ah, to the language wars!

If anything kills COBOL, it will be COBOL programmers, who are not using the
language to its fullest. So, if you can find a copy, I recommend "Object
Orientation: An Introduction for COBOL Programmers", where the author
explains the ideas from structured development that gave rise to OO. The
hardest part is the new jargon.

I will point out that all of Micro Focus's tools are written in COBOL. The
editor, the compiler (!), their GUI workbench. Sure, this is probably
pushing the limits of the language. OTOH, I would like to see any language
handle an unlimited number of strings of unlimited text. My workstation has
64MB of RAM, and I want to see the language that will allow me to pass it's
subroutines a string 68,719,476,737 chars long.

Since the current draft of the next COBOL standard contains OO extensions,
many if not all the things Ken mentions are possible. I believe that MF
COBOL already supports DBCS, so Unicode should be no problem.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com
It's getting easier to hate advocacy