Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A programming language developed in the late 1950s especially for business applications.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Co(mmon) b(usiness-)o(riented) l(anguage).

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Examples

  • In 1971 Vincent returned to Pillsbury and programmed the GE 635 in Cobol.

    Oral history interview with Richard Vincent 1983

  • And yes, I know, spelling it "Cobol" is only forgivable because of all the effort the design must have taken.

    Archive 2009-03-01 2009

  • And yes, I know, spelling it "Cobol" is only forgivable because of all the effort the design must have taken.

    Open Thread: #420 Islanded In A Stream Of Stars 2009

  • Couple our glorification/ignorance of war with the economic recession, and you have Nolan's ambiguous corporate stance in the form of Cobol Engineering.

    Derek Beres: Christoper Nolan's False Start 2010

  • Whether you cut your teeth on Cobol or were raised on a steady diet of open source software, there's plenty you can learn about the folks on the other side of the age divide.

    Bridging the IT generation gap 2010

  • With technology being introduced Monday, Micro Focus is offering assistance in migrating Cobol, CICS, and DB2 applications to Microsoft Windows via a managed code version of Micro Focus's mainframe and application modernization technology.

    Micro Focus moving mainframe apps to Windows 2010

  • Couple our glorification/ignorance of war with the economic recession, and you have Nolan's ambiguous corporate stance in the form of Cobol Engineering.

    Derek Beres: Christoper Nolan's False Start Derek Beres 2010

  • All it took was patching a few Cobol programs, although Bernie Ebbers sold it big -- to his eventual comeuppance.

    To Mark the Beginning of the Last Year of a Decade in the 2000s 2009

  • The shortage is already so acute that Japanese businesses had to deal with what they dubbed the 2007 Cobol Problem, when a large batch of older engineers who programmed in the Cobol computer language -- which many Japanese companies still use for their internal systems -- retired.

    India's Outsourcing Firms Lure More Japan Business 2009

  • The first was in information systems, where I wrote Cobol programs, designed Hewlett-Packard's cost accounting system, and managed a data center.

    Karen Blue 2006

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