Editing COBOL (section)

===Concerns about the design process===
Doubts have been raised about the competence of the standards committee. Short-term committee member Howard Bromberg said that there was "little control" over the development process and that it was "plagued by discontinuity of personnel and ... a lack of talent."{{sfn|Beyer|2009|p=301}} Jean Sammet and Jerome Garfunkel also noted that changes introduced in one revision of the standard would be reverted in the next, due as much to changes in who was in the standard committee as to objective evidence.<ref>{{cite journal | title=Summary of Changes in COBOL, 1960–1985 | journal=Annals of the History of Computing | date=October 1985 | volume=7 | issue=4 | pages=342 | first1=Jean | last1=Sammet | first2=Jerome | last2=Garfunkel | doi=10.1109/MAHC.1985.10033 | s2cid=17940092 }}</ref>

COBOL standards have repeatedly suffered from delays: COBOL-85 arrived five years later than hoped,<ref>{{cite conference | url=http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/afips/1978/5086/00/50861107.pdf | title=Data Base Facility for COBOL 80 | first=Margaret M. | last=Cook | conference=1978 National Computer Conference | quote=The earliest date that a new COBOL standard could be developed and approved is the year 1980 [...]. | pages=1107–1112 | publisher=AFIPS Press | date=June 1978 | location=Anaheim, California | lccn= 55-44701 | doi=10.1109/AFIPS.1978.63 | access-date=2 September 2014 | editor1-last=Ghosh | editor1-first=Sakti P. | editor2-last=Liu | editor2-first=Leonard Y.}}</ref> COBOL 2002 was five years late,<ref name="SW95"/> and COBOL 2014 was six years late.<ref name="cobolstandards.com"/><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.cobolstandard.info/wg4/open/wg4n0188.doc | title=Resolutions from WG4 meeting 24 – June 26–28, 2003 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA | date=11 July 2003 | access-date=29 June 2014 | format=doc | quote=a June 2008 revision of the COBOL standard | page=1 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160308015945/http://www.cobolstandard.info/wg4/open/wg4n0188.doc | archive-date=8 March 2016}}</ref> To combat delays, the standard committee allowed the creation of optional addenda which would add features more quickly than by waiting for the next standard revision. However, some committee members raised concerns about incompatibilities between implementations and frequent modifications of the standard.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tQOdtdJmVSsC&pg=PA12 | title=Cobol standard add-ons flayed | journal=Computerworld | volume=20 | issue=28 | pages=1, 12 | first=Charles | last=Babcock | date=14 July 1986}}</ref>