Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
IBM Cloud Operating Systems Software Linux

IBM Creates a COBOL Compiler For Linux On x86 (theregister.com) 188

IBM has announced a COBOL compiler for Linux on x86. "IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 1.1 brings IBM's COBOL compilation technologies and capabilities to the Linux on x86 environment," said IBM in an announcement, describing it as "the latest addition to the IBM COBOL compiler family, which includes Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and COBOL for AIX." The Register reports: COBOL -- the common business-oriented language -- has its roots in the 1950s and is synonymous with the mainframe age and difficulties paying down technical debt accrued since a bygone era of computing. So why is IBM -- which is today obsessed with hybrid clouds -- bothering to offer a COBOL compiler for Linux on x86? Because IBM thinks you may want your COBOL apps in a hybrid cloud, albeit the kind of hybrid IBM fancies, which can mean a mix of z/OS, AIX, mainframes, POWER systems and actual public clouds.
[...]
But the announcement also suggests IBM doesn't completely believe this COBOL on x86 Linux caper has a future as it concludes: "This solution also provides organizations with the flexibility to move workloads back to IBM Z should performance and throughput requirements increase, or to share business logic and data with CICS Transaction Server for z/OS." The new offering requires RHEL 7.8 or later, or Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, or later.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

IBM Creates a COBOL Compiler For Linux On x86

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:16AM (#61249978) Homepage
    ... no wait, it's just the tumour in my sprawling stomach
  • Cobol has always kind of interested me. It's my understanding that Cobol is reasonably easy to learn and the code is more-or-less self-documenting. Someday (someday...) I'll probably get around to playing with Cobol just for the hell of it.

    But I don't think it's going to be IBM's Cobol since they'll want a hefty price for it. (I checked the website, there's a tab labelled "pricing" but there's no content there yet.)

    https://gnucobol.sourceforge.i... [sourceforge.io] is free, though, and if I do actually get off my butt an

    • by edis ( 266347 )

      I recall seeing COBOL in the portfolio of the Microfocus as well. There may be more spin-offs.

    • by jlowery ( 47102 )

      If you're used to working in a modern language, I think the verbosity of COBOL will crush your soul. But then, Java persists, so what do I know?

      • I love a good Java bashing but is Java really more verbose than C#. I mean class patterns in general are "verbose" simply because the patterns that exist with whitespace which I think is why people eventually really pushed for inline functions, so you can have a simple line that includes a simple function without having all the extra whitespace. Of course there is a lot more to that decision but nonetheless, it seems like one reason people can like them and probably overuse them as an anti-pattern.

      • Plain Java is way better than IBM's EGL or VG - which is a language that you can then generate COBOL or Java code with for back end and JSPs for front end.

      • I agree with you, but apparently verbosity isn't the downside some of us think it is. See: Powershell still existing

      • Verbose languages are less of an issue today than they were 30 years ago.
        1. Modern Displays can do 230 characters in one screen, clearly and readable. Back in the old days 80 column displays were the high resolution screens. Old school verbose languages were stuck with a lot of line wrapping, (or if they were card based, a lot of extra cards)

        2. Modern IDEs allow type ahead, and searching for commands. This makes referencing long winded commands much faster and easier, often requiring you only type a couple

    • I think RPG is far more "self-documenting" than COBOL and I agree with jlowery that the verbosity of COBOL can be soul crushing. Nonetheless, playing with it or at least seeing some basic programs in it, can be a good experience.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      But I don't think it's going to be IBM's Cobol since they'll want a hefty price for it. (I checked the website, there's a tab labelled "pricing" but there's no content there yet.)

      The announcement already sounds expensive enough:

      IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 1.1 introduce the following part numbers:
      Part number description Part number
      IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 Virtual Processor Core License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months D28XQLL
      IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 Virtual Processor Core License SW Subscription & Support Renewal E0R5KLL
      IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 Virtual Processor Core License SW Subscription & Support Reinstatement 12 Months D28XRLL
      IBM COBOL for Linux on x86 Virtual Processor Core License Monthly License D28XTLL

      Something with a monthly support plan generally isn't cheap.

      I suppose the big reason is it's IBM - they know that many big companies have extensive amounts of COBOL code running throughout, and maybe on aging mainframe hardware they wish to migrate off of for various reasons.

      COBOL is

      • Anyone who is even remotely interested in this doesn't give a damn about the maintenance subscription, because they want this in order to shift away from even more expensive maintenance on a Z-series mainframe or many P-series AIX servers or aging AS/400 installs. Being able to run their decades-old legacy apps on Linux/x86 means being able to virtualize right next to their other x86 server workloads on their already existing vSphere clusters, existing cloud environments, or for the more adventurous, conta

      • This could very well help companies migrated off unsupported ancient equipment and migrate to new systems without having to rewrite a ton of existing code that already does what you need.

        Or rewrite the old code, but only one module at a time since it can run on the same platform.

    • by mrbester ( 200927 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @04:45AM (#61250268) Homepage

      > I checked the website, there's a tab labelled "pricing" but there's no content there yet.

      If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.

      • Also, IBM loves to charge different companies different prices for the same things. That's one of the many benefits of positioning yourself as a contracting/services company.

    • It's worth going through a tutorial just to see what the fuss is about. It's more like SQL than a real programming language.

  • We also need an RPG compiler for the picture to become complete.

    • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      I know you're joking, but I cut my teeth on RPGII, RPGIII, and RPG400, before I moved on to other worlds.

      I don't mind RPG at all. It's quite fast when doing what it was designed to do.

      • Re:How about RPG? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by IdanceNmyCar ( 7335658 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:30AM (#61250144)

        This. RPG perhaps is the best at what it's designed to do. Other languages have to use certain patterns, ORM, and more with code that seems less self-documenting than what RPG can do. COBOL in my mind is largely a patch for going beyond RPG, where more logic is required than can be achieved in RPG. This is a bit weird because if I recall right, COBOL is an ancestor of RPG but when I see RPG/COBOL shops, COBOL is only used when you need the extra logic.

    • Dotnet runs on Linux, no? Alas, you may be stuck on Windows for the IDE.

      https://www-356.ibm.com/partne... [ibm.com]

    • Feh. You can't run either one without a good JCL For Linux package.
    • I'm sure there's RPG. There are PL/I, MUMPS and BCPL compilers for Linux.

  • But why? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )

    There is already GnuCOBOL [sourceforge.net] which translates COBOL into standard C (which is then compiled), is free, passes all the NIST COBOL 85 test suite tests, is translated into a bunch of languages, and is multiplatform.

    COBOL is solved problem; there is no need for a new COBOL compiler.

    • Re:But why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr. Barky ( 152560 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:01AM (#61250076)

      COBOL is solved problem; there is no need for a new COBOL compiler.

      That's like saying GCC compiles C so nobody else should make a C compiler.

      • I would think it may even be more complex than that? More like python compilers. I know there are many different versus of COBOL and there might be some limitations to GnuCOBOL that do not really work for the IBM shops that still want to develop COBOL on Linux.

        • Yeah. It's not as if Microsoft invented vendor lock-in. It was IBM. They were masters of it before Microsoft even existed. Without a doubt (ok, maybe some doubt - I really have never touched COBOL), IBM has COBOL/Blue that adds a few non-standard features.

    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      COBOL is solved problem; there is no need for a new COBOL compiler.

      I'll never understand this attitude. Though I suspect it's why so much modern software ends up being hundreds of megabytes of libraries uncomfortably glued together.

      After all, if we didn't reinvent the wheel, my bicycle would weigh 800lbs.

      Not totally unrelated: It's essential for the long-term health of any programming language to have multiple, compatible, implementations. I'm sure you can think of a few programming languages that died because the maintainers of the only implementation gave up on it. I

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      There may well be people asking whether there is a COBOL compiler on x86 they can _buy_. Some people and organizations do not understand FOSS. Or they want to pay money so they can sue later if things do not work. (Good luck with that...)

      • Or they want to pay money so they can sue later if things do not work. (Good luck with that...)

        Or just for passing the buck reasons. "We used IBM, how could that possibly go wrong?" No need to justify your decision to choose the 800 ton gorilla, like you would with something that cost $0.

    • I think it is so IBM can keep its business partnerships.
      Companies are no longer buying mainframes, and big iron. While a modern mainframe is an amazing computer to work on, and handles heavy load like a real champ. It is extremely difficult to justify that performance for its price, then factoring in today's business need to fail-over and redundancy it gets way more expensive very fast.

      They are a still a lot of COBOL code out there running things, but IBM Customers are looking at the expense on keeping t

  • April 1st was last week

  • by Traf-O-Data-Hater ( 858971 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:20AM (#61250114)
    ...for it may well be looking after your bank account balance.
    Or if not yours, someone elses in the world, somewhere.
  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:36AM (#61250154)

    Forget it. I am only interested in coding by setting positions of gears on the antikythera mechanism.

    • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      Forget it. I am only interested in coding by setting positions of gears on the antikythera mechanism.

      Easy there young blood with your fancy gears and such. Real programming is when putting up 25-ton rocks ('SET'), after dragging them ('CARRY') a few dozen kilometers from the computational storage space ('QUARRY') to the computation site ('HENGE').

  • by AntisocialNetworker ( 5443888 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:41AM (#61250160)

    It's also got "Native support for XML"? and features from ANSI COBOL 2014, presumably it's more COBOL++ or something.
    I'll stick to POSIX shell scripts.

    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @05:00AM (#61250292) Journal

      presumably it's more COBOL++ or something.

      It's actually called ADD ONE TO COBOL GIVING COBOL

      • COBOL = COBOL + 1.
        • You are of course correct, but the point of the joke is to be mean to COBOL, so I think it's funnier than omitting the "GIVING" phrase, even if pedantically I'm not correct.

      • presumably it's more COBOL++ or something.

        It's actually called ADD ONE TO COBOL GIVING COBOL

        It's:

        ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING OBJECT-ORIENTED-COBOL

        When I give a talk that's my opening joke and has been for decades. It's an interesting joke because to get it someone has to understand enough C to understand the language name "C++" and they have to understand enough COBOL and they have to put it all together. Younger crowds have no idea, but guys my age who learned COBOL in university (and then took a shower) get it.

        • I don't get it?

          Isn't that equivalent to object_oriented_c = c+1? With the GIVING something-else, the value of COBOL is unmodified.

          I the point of ADD ONE TO COBOL is it modifies COBOL, like c++. The GIVING phrase is just to troll.

  • by nextTimeIsTheLast ( 6188328 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @03:46AM (#61250176)
    With CICS as well (pretty much no one wrote/ran COBOL without either CICS or IMS back in the day). And if you're wandering why? (in this day and age) here is the answer:

    High throughput: for example CICS/COBOL and an IBM mainframe could easily manage a national (50000 terminal) network of ATM's using 1960's compute power (RAM and storage measured in KB), compute power/CPU speed in MHz! - do that with modern tech and see what milage you get.

    Isolation: Stuff was written as "transations" discreet smallish programs that has limited and defined interaction with other code (sounding familiar?). Data integrity was built in and guaranteed at the transaction level with automatic backout if the transaction failed.

    HIGHLY resource efficient: The level of memory optimisation and reuse was phenomenal - no waste - ever

    High Programmer productivity: Program isolation (from other programs) and the consistency/simplicity of the environment meant very high productivity.

    Sophisticated framworks built in: for example dynamic distribution of workload and data, program to program communication etc etc.

    There's many more reasons but that's the first few that come to mind (I worked in the CICS product development team in IBM Hursley by the way)
    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @07:17AM (#61250518)

      IBM had a lot of fascinating architectures. The take away I get from studying them is they tried to move as much OS overhead into hardware as possible. Dedicated hardware is always faster than a general purpose CPU. For the longest time people (including myself) thought IBM made boring beige colored boxes for boring business purposes. It turns out the engineering was top notch and how things worked was completely alien compared to your typical PC or Unix workstation. People thing spinning up a VM is some new idea. Well IBM was doing that back in the 1970s.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @05:15AM (#61250308)

    Learn COBOL and FORTRAN! You will be the youngest one on the team!

  • I am waiting until you can program web front ends in COBOL compiled to Javascript before I dive in. COBOL, DOM, Javascript in a stateless environment sounds like a dream.

  • Looking forward to reading Python programmers laments.
  • All cobol compilers should come with a 80's like voice synth that read the code

  • by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @08:24AM (#61250746) Journal
    Because companies are in business to make money, not satisfy young programmers who only want the coolest shiny language and silver bullet. No matter what issue the latest language de jour solves, if it doesn't pay for all the hassle of rewriting something that already works and does the job adequately for the business to continue making money, it isn't worth it. This is the ultimate case of good enough is good enough that beats perfection. I have no idea how to code in COBOL. C, C++, Java, Python, Shell, and I won't admit to knowing Visual Basic and JavaScript. etc. etc. But I could be blind and still see the value of keeping COBOL programs around. If it does the job, and it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's only issue is finding people to maintain it, and boxes to code it on (since big iron is falling out of favour).
  • How much does this product cost?
    Do you have to purchase it with software maintenance?

    Sadly, there is no Educational Allowance so schools will be unable to teach this enterprise language.

  • I can't seem to find a working Linux driver for the IBM 711 Hollerith Card Reader my COBOL program demands...

  • by Jerrry ( 43027 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @12:26PM (#61251800)

    Now how do we convince Linus to rewrite the Linux kernel in COBOL?

Pause for storage relocation.

Working...