roger Terry's concerns...

As i understand it, COBOL still runs 80% of business applications.
Even in a conversion process, you will still need to understand COBOL.

So i think it is almost a necessity....

To quote from some old bosses I've had:

"COBOL will be a dead language in 10 years." 1984
  - on conversion of reports from Fortran to COBOL

"PC's aren't necessary..." 1986
  - denied my request for a PC for MIS department use

"Fax machines are a waist of time and money - That's why we use couriers..."
1987
  - on a request for a fax machine

"E-mail is a waist of time, and will never catch on..." 1988
  - when I requested that we use it to communicate with remote offices...

"HP/Desk is just a toy, and has no useful purpose..."
  - (HP/Desk was a for-runner of Outlook) - on a request from me,
    backed by our sales department, to give users access to HP/Desk

In short... the people we work for, bless their harts, sometime miss the
mark
when it comes to doing the right thing.  COBOL, imho, is going to be with us
for a long time yet.  Until those systems are replaced, and a good language
is developed for the business environment.

mc

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