COBOL – Still standing the test of time
I&#x27;ve always thought that the reason COBOL is still &quot;popular&quot; is that it became an entrenched technology many years ago, and the cost of replacement is high enough (and it works fine doing what it&#x27;s doing) that no one wants to invest the time and money to replace it&#x27;s usage.<p>This quote made me pause though, &quot;COBOL remains the preferred choice for systems where application quality and operating cost remain important considerations&quot;. How much is COBOL being &quot;chosen&quot; vs. COBOL is basically required b&#x2F;c of the existing codebase and systems that need to be integrated with?<p>The latter is my guess, and the choice seems to be really, &quot;what&#x27;s the best way to extend this existing system?&quot; If that system is in Java, it&#x27;s probably Java... C it&#x27;s probably C... COBOL it&#x27;s probably COBOL.