Editing COBOL (section)

== Legacy ==
COBOL programs are used globally in governments and various industries including retail, travel, finance, and healthcare. Testimony before the [[Committee on Oversight and Government Reform|House of Representatives]] in 2016 indicated that COBOL is still in use by many federal agencies.<ref name="Powner, GAO, 2016">{{cite web |last=Powner |first=David A. |date=25 May 2016 |title=Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems |url=https://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160615044750/https://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf |archive-date=15 June 2016 |access-date=19 July 2019 |website=[[Government Accountability Office]] |page=18 |quote=Several agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture (USDA), DHS, HHS, Justice, Treasury, and VA, reported using Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL)—a programming language developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s—to program their legacy systems. It is widely known that agencies need to move to more modern, maintainable languages, as appropriate and feasible.}}</ref>

COBOL currently runs on diverse operating systems such as [[z/OS]], [[z/VSE]], [[ICL VME|VME]], [[Unix]], [[NonStop (server computers)|NonStop]] OS, [[OpenVMS]] and [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]]. In 1997, the [[Gartner Group]] reported that 80% of the world's business ran on COBOL with over 200 billion lines of code{{efn |name=Gartner ubiquity}} and 5 billion lines more being written annually.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://proc.isecon.org/2000/126/ISECON.2000.Kizior.pdf | title=Does COBOL Have a Future? |access-date=30 September 2012 |first1=Ronald J. |last1=Kizior |first2=Donald |last2=Carr |first3=Paul |last3=Halpern |journal=The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2000 |volume=17 |issue=126 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160817115437/http://proc.isecon.org/2000/126/ISECON.2000.Kizior.pdf | archive-date=17 August 2016}}</ref> As of 2020, COBOL ran background processes 95% of the time a credit or debit card was swiped.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Thompson |first=Clive |date=2020-11-10 |title=The Code that Controls Your Money |url=https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/cobol-controls-your-money |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210909050522/https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/cobol-controls-your-money |archive-date=2021-09-09 |access-date=2025-04-19 |website=www.wealthsimple.com |language=en-ca}}</ref>

=== Y2K ===
Near the end of the 20th century, the [[year 2000 problem]] (Y2K) was the focus of significant COBOL programming effort, sometimes by the same programmers who had designed the systems decades before. The particular level of effort required to correct COBOL code has been attributed to the large amount of business-oriented COBOL, as business applications use dates heavily, and to fixed-length data fields.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://homepages.wmich.edu/~rea/Y2K/FAQ.html |title=Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About the Y2K Problem |last=White |first=Doug |date=12 July 1998 |website=homepages.wmich.edu |access-date=29 April 2022 |quote=Thus, the main problem of Y2K is the problem of incorrect results when date mathematics are conducted. |archive-date=7 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211107132002/https://homepages.wmich.edu/~rea/Y2K/FAQ.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Some studies attribute as much as "24% of Y2K software repair costs to Cobol".<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/841605 |title=Some strategic Y2K blessings |last=Kappelman |first=Leon A. |date=2000 |journal=IEEE Software |pages=42–46 |volume=17 |issue=2|doi=10.1109/52.841605 }}</ref> After the clean-up effort put into these programs for Y2K, a 2003 survey found that many remained in use.{{sfn|Carr|Kizior|2003|p=16}} The authors said that the survey data suggest "a gradual decline in the importance of COBOL in application development over the [following] 10 years unless ... integration with other languages and technologies can be adopted".{{sfn|Carr|Kizior|2003|p=10}}

=== Modernization efforts ===
In 2006 and 2012, ''[[Computerworld]]'' surveys (of 352 readers) found that over 60% of organizations used COBOL (more than [[C++]] and [[Visual Basic .NET]]) and that for half of those, COBOL was used for the majority of their internal software.<ref name="Computerworld Not Dead Yet">{{cite journal |title=Cobol: Not Dead Yet |url=https://www.computerworld.com/article/1709161/cobol-not-dead-yet.html |access-date=10 December 2024 |journal=Computerworld |date=4 October 2006 |last=Mitchell |first=Robert L.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225099/Cobol_brain_drain_Survey_results |access-date=27 April 2014 |title=Cobol brain drain: Survey results |journal=Computerworld |date=14 March 2012 |author=<!-- N/A --> |archive-date=27 April 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140427203258/http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225099/Cobol_brain_drain_Survey_results |url-status=dead }}</ref> 36% of managers said they planned to migrate from COBOL, and 25% said that they would do so if not for the expense of rewriting [[legacy code]]. Alternatively, some businesses have migrated their COBOL programs from mainframes to cheaper, faster hardware.<ref name="Computerworld Not Dead Yet" />

By 2019, the number of COBOL programmers was shrinking fast due to retirements, leading to an impending skills gap in business and government organizations which still use mainframe systems for high-volume transaction processing. Efforts to rewrite COBOL systems in newer languages have proven expensive and problematic, as has the outsourcing of code maintenance, thus proposals to train more people in COBOL are advocated.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://ibmsystemsmag.com/IBM-Z/10/2019/closing-cobol-programming-skills-gap |title=Closing the COBOL Programming Skills Gap |last1=Teplitzky |first1=Phil |access-date=11 June 2020 |magazine=IBM Systems Magazine, IBM Z |date=25 October 2019 |archive-date=13 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200413033628/https://ibmsystemsmag.com/IBM-Z/10/2019/closing-cobol-programming-skills-gap |url-status=dead}}</ref> 

Several banks have undertaken multi-year COBOL modernization efforts, sometimes resulting in widespread service disruptions that result in fines.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Megaw |first=Nicholas |date=2018-04-25 |title=TSB's 'flawless' IT migration turns into chaos for its customers |url=https://www.ft.com/content/cf410e20-48a7-11e8-8ee8-cae73aab7ccb |access-date=2025-04-19 |work=Financial Times}}</ref> 

During the [[COVID-19 pandemic]] and the ensuing surge of unemployment, several US states reported a shortage of skilled COBOL programmers to support the legacy systems used for unemployment benefit management. Many of these systems had been in the process of conversion to more modern programming languages prior to the pandemic, but the process was put on hold.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html |title=Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims |first=Alicia |last=Lee |date=8 April 2020 |access-date=8 April 2020 |work=[[CNN]]}}</ref> Similarly, the US [[Internal Revenue Service]] rushed to patch its COBOL-based [[Individual Master File]] in order to disburse the tens of millions of payments mandated by the [[Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Long |first1=Heather |last2=Stein |first2=Jeff |last3=Rein |first3=Lisa |last4=Romm |first4=Tony |title=Stimulus checks and other coronavirus relief hindered by dated technology and rocky government rollout |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=17 April 2020 |access-date=19 April 2020 |url= https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/17/stimulus-unemployment-checks-delays-government-delays/}}</ref>