alt Hacker NewsI agree with you by and large except for this part.
> COBOL's promise was ... we wouldn't need programmers anymore..average person doesn't know how to explain & solve a problem
COBOL wasn't intended to be used by an "average" person but rather those with deep domain knowledge. They would know the business processes so well that they could transcribe it in COBOL with little or no need to learn how the computers worked. In some ways similar to analysts/data folks using SQL to communicate with databases.
While at it let me share a few more aspects of the top of my head.
COBOL and 4GLs in general were primarily intended to be used to build business applications; payroll, banking, HRMS, inventory management and so on. Even within that emphasis was more towards batch processing operations to reduce the burden on people doing routine bulk operations like reconciliation.
COBOL harks back to the times when there was no dedicated DBMS software. Which is why you see so much focus on how files are organised and the extensive verbs around files which somewhat resemble SQL today.
Replies
> COBOL and 4GLs in general
COBOL dates back to 1959, much earlier than 4GLs, and the cited 1992/1999 articles make the point that 4GLs were poised to replace the likes of COBOL and FORTRAN when in fact those dinosaurs, or rather nautili since still living, turned out to outlive 4GLs except SQL (when counted as 4GL).
> In some ways similar to analysts/data folks using SQL to communicate with databases.
But SQL has the exact same problem. Except for very trivial scenarios, you can't just be an expert and plop your expertise into a SQL query. You have to learn how to use SQL to use SQL.
It seems like Excel is an example of a successful app meant for a similar kind of audience
In my experience, often it’s hard to find that person with deep domain knowledge, and even when they do, it’s unstructured, they take things for granted they shouldn’t* and the have no appreciation of the demands of formalism.
Getting anything you can use to construct a work plan, never mind a detailed feature list, out of clients can be a dark art.
*To the point I have repeatedly experienced a point close to the end of the project where they go “What do you mean you don’t handle a case I have failed to mention for the entire duration of the project?”