Wim Ebbinkhuijsen (born 24 December 1939, Amsterdam) is a retired Dutch computer scientist who is considered to be one of the "fathers of Cobol". He presented his story at the April #DevDay events in Stockholm and Copenhagen. Here are his slides. in 1979 he initiated the International ISO COBOL Working Group. From 1967 he was a member, and from 1978 until 2003 he was the chairman of the Dutch COBOL Committee ("Nederlandse COBOL Commissie"). From 1998 until 2001 he was also a member of the NCITS/ANSI COBOL committee X3J4. As such, he has designed and rewritten dozens parts of the current COBOL standard. He has been active for many years with Exin (EXamenINstituut, "Dutch examination Institute"), where he acted as member and later as chairman of the examining-board T2-Cobol. He has written six course-books about COBOL. He also wrote the first International Standard for the programming language BASIC. At October 22, 2004 he left the Cobol world after 42 years of commitment, with a valedictory symposium in the auditorium of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. For his enormous contribution to COBOL he received an IEEE award, as well as the Dutch royal distinction, Knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau (Ridder in de Orde van Oranje Nassau).

1. A mechanic at
his daily work …

2. Mark I
length 16m
height 2,50m
765.000 components
650 km wires

3. Calculation of
implosions

4. Salvo-calculations

5. Uncrackable German coding machine

6. At first relais,
very much of them …
then electrotubes,
very much of them

7. Then magnetcores, very
much of them
Followed by transistors,
very much of them

8. Punched tape
Extremely
vulnerable
Punched card
Still very
vulnerable

9. Magnetic tape
only serial access
Magnetic disk
Random access

11. Generates machine
language
Varies per
computer

12. Generates
assembler-code
1952 First compiler
“FlowMatic”
by Grace Hopper

13. Thanks to DoD…

14. Eisenhower
president

15. Kennedy
running

16. Revolution
Fidel Castro

17. No Berlin
wall yet

18. NO COBOL NO BID

19. 1961
A COBOL program
compiled at
two computers

20. - in The Netherlands
- 2 teachers
- 16 students

21. Scale-decrease
Used in
Apollo AGC
25% COBOL

22. 1975
Microsoft

23. 1976
Apple

24. Google
(originally
Googol)

25. COBOL : GOOGLE
7 : 1

26. COBOL
Alive
and
kicking!

27. 25 billion financial transactions / day
(13 x / day)
70-80% in COBOL
Creditcards
ATM's
Tickets
Banking
Mobile phones
Stockmarkets
Taxes
Insurances

28. 300 billion COBOL lines 300.000.000.000
5 billion new lines aeach year 5.000.000.000
Total investment 2 trillion $ 2.000.000.000.000
And ...
1.500.000 COBOL developers

29. You just don't
throw that away

30. End of WW II

31. - production
- Bank accounts
- transport and logistics
- government
- trading
- insurances

32. More cars
More telephones

33. More TV's and
TV-stations
New: satellites

34. Travel-agencies
Airlines
Railways
Hospitality

35. – new hardware
– robust software
. fast
. data-driven
. reliable

36. 1964:
IBM announces
System 360

37. a. New technology
b. Smaller
c. Modular

38. Fast to learn
Robust
Reliable

39. 1. record-structuring
2. mass data-processing
3. decimal calculating
4. report generating

40. - Soon very popular
- sales far beyond
estimations
- PC = IBM

41. 1981
1st MS-DOS

42. 1985 1st WINDOWS

43. 1990 1st WORD,
EXCEL

44. COBOL-scriber's image

45. Catastrophic?
Real problem?
Hoax?

46. And remain yourself

47. From primitive to
advanced
From simple to
complex

51. Useless!
Get out!
Never again!
Or …?

52. Meter: light in vacuum
in 1/299.792.458 sec
Inch: 2,54 cm

53. - too expensive
- keep your
investments
- hardly any ROI
- current system
is efficient
- no real
improvements

54. Stick to what you have

55. COBOL
programmers:
becoming scarce

56. – Necessary
– Business along
with education
authorities

57. – Change position
– Improve earnings
– User groups

58. Is your system really that bad?

59. Performance
. response-times
. use of resources
. availability
. data management

60. Complexity = diversity * dependency

61. Replacing ...
or upgrading?

62. – Lasting
COBOL support
– Lifecycle
COBOL-market:
long and strong

63. Pre-analysis:
. duplicates
. unused routines
. inefficiënt coding

64. Code-translation:
– inefficiencies being
copied
– new inefficiencies
– more complex
results
– increased
maintenance

65. COBOL remains the
fundament
– investments
– committed vendors
– COBOL in 2050 still
popular!
Special care:
shortage of programmers

66. Consider migration when:
. Change of database-systems
. Change of functionality
. Hardware adjustment
. Integration of companies

67. Migration risks:
– equal or less functionality
– maintenance problems
– increased runtime
– no added value

68. COBOL replaced?
•In the long run
•Not by just one language

69. - never matched
- no successor yet