Editing COBOL (section)

=== 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}}