Talk:COBOL

GA Reassessment

{{Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/COBOL/1}}

COBOL syntax designed for "management" to read

Is there any evidence of this in COBOL's design record? The 1960 report says "The COBOL System allows the user to prepare his specifications for the problem solution in the language most natural to him - namely English," and "[The procedure division] allows the user to express his thoughts in meaningful English.… That is, any user of COBOL can understand the information appearing in this division without regard to any particular computer." There is no clear reference to management here, but rather to high-level programmers essentially as they exist today. It's misleading to call such people "management" only because they oversaw human compilers before they had automatic ones. When I worked as an electrical engineer, the fact that I handed off soldering work to technicians did not make me their manager. 2601:642:4F84:1590:2438:9E10:1872:2571 (talk) 00:45, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

paragraph 3 & 4

These paragraphs are less interpretable by layman if anyone wants to move them and tidy up the lede paragraphs. Since this is a GA complaint, I may even come back and do it myself after reading the article.FourLights (talk) 00:12, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

legacy

"The relative influence of the languages that were used is still indicated in the recommended advisory printed in all COBOL reference manuals"

Does this refer to cobol more generally or the cobol section it's under??FourLights (talk) FourLights (talk) 00:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)