Name: Anonymous 2009-07-14 10:04
People are often surprised when presented with the evidence for COBOL's dominance in the market place. The hype that surrounds some computer languages would persuade you to believe that most of the production business applications in the world are written in Java, C, C++ or Visual Basic and that only a small percentage are written in COBOL. In fact, the reverse is actually the case.
One reason for this misconception lies in the difference between the vertical and the horizontal software markets.
In the vertical software market (sometimes called "bespoke" software) applications cost many millions of dollars to produce, are tailored to a specified company, encapsulate the business rules of that company, and only a limited number of copies of the software may be in use.
In the horizontal software market, applications may still cost millions of dollars to produce but thousands, and in some cases millions, of copies of the software are in use. As a result, these applications often have a very high profile, a short life span, and a relatively low per-copy replacement cost.
The high visibility of horizontal applications like Microsoft Word or Excel persuades people that the languages used to write these applications are the market leaders. But however many copies of Excel are sold, it is just a single application produced by a limited number of programmers. Many more programmers are involved in coding or maintaining one off, "bespoke", applications. And these programmers generally write their programs in COBOL.
One reason for this misconception lies in the difference between the vertical and the horizontal software markets.
In the vertical software market (sometimes called "bespoke" software) applications cost many millions of dollars to produce, are tailored to a specified company, encapsulate the business rules of that company, and only a limited number of copies of the software may be in use.
In the horizontal software market, applications may still cost millions of dollars to produce but thousands, and in some cases millions, of copies of the software are in use. As a result, these applications often have a very high profile, a short life span, and a relatively low per-copy replacement cost.
The high visibility of horizontal applications like Microsoft Word or Excel persuades people that the languages used to write these applications are the market leaders. But however many copies of Excel are sold, it is just a single application produced by a limited number of programmers. Many more programmers are involved in coding or maintaining one off, "bespoke", applications. And these programmers generally write their programs in COBOL.