Y2K

29 Pages 7367 Words

Today, well into the third second year of the 21st century, many businesses and governments are breathing a sigh of relief that the millennium has passed without any of the predicted 'Y2K' disasters - planes falling out of the sky, ice boxes and other household gismos going wild , the whole economy coming to a screeching halt, etc.
The businesses and governments worldwide had spent billions of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours trying to ensure 'Y2K' compliance. The press and "experts" of academia took their age-old COBOL bashing to a new height and intensity and created the 'Y2K crisis'. COBOL was made out to be the mother of all evils in the computer world.
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the first female admiral of the US Navy, was the mother of COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language). COBOL was 'invented' out of her Flow-Matic program, which was developed by her to teach computers plain English commands. The Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) was set up under the DOD sponsorship. On May 28, 1959, the University of Pennsylvania. The first meeting was convened by Admiral Hooper representing the Department of Defense (DOD).
CODASYL was made of independent language experts and information technology technicians from commercial-industry, finance, manufacturing, retail, computer software vendors, government, and academia. Its main mission was to correct a deficiency of computer language standards in the field and to formulate a common business programming language.
The initial specifications for COBOL were presented by CODASYL in April of 1960. It was designed to be a business language that was problem oriented and machine independent. COBOL was designed for continuous changes and development. COBOL was an effort to make a programming language that was like natural English, easy to write and easier to read so that even the user can read the source and see exactly what the computer is doing or supposed to do.
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