Fujitsu COBOL is a very good thing so...

[CobolNovice]

Fujitsu COBOL is a very good thing so why is it that there seems to be so little known about it in the IT industry?

I socialise with a large group of computer people and I'm fed up with telling them that COBOL has come a long way since the 60s. Why does such a good version of the language have such a low business profile, at least here in the UK?

I'm fed up with having to spend entire evenings saying "But you can do that in PowerCOBOL".
CobolNovice

 

[Tromba]

Hello Cobolnovice

Yes, you are right!

It seems there aren't no more informations and no more programmers that are using Powercobol.
Here in Italy, i was the first programmer that bought the Fujitsu Cobol ver 3.0 in 1997, simply searching on the web.
I'm currently using the v6.1 and i'm satisfied about its features and performances. There are still some things to improve, but we will see on the .NET release.
Most of my customer sometime asking me if my applications are developed using C++ or Visual Basic.
I respond: No, it's Cobol. They don't believe me.
There are more programmers in South America (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico) that are using Powercobol v5.0, but i think the most of them are using a pirated copy.
I have downloaded the Fujitsu Cobol .NET release candidate and more things are improved, but it seems to be another languages with the interoperation with other languages on the same project. It should be a better solution, but we need to learn more. Fujitsu is preparing a special tools to read old projects made with v5.0/6.1 and export them with the new .NET environment.
I hope to see early the final release and evaluate its performarces.

Gianni

 

[CobolKid]

Let your fingers do the talking. I don't try to convince the kids that Cobol's the way to go, I hear plenty of "cc+c++c+++" or "your a dinosaur" type stuff. Let 'em have the "latest and greatest," when it comes down to coding the vast majority of day to day stuff, this dinosaur insults them into opening their eyes a bit with code. Tons of it.