Cobol

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Description

COBOL

COmmercial Business Oriented Language. A language for administrative applications with large output requirements. The development started in 1959 when the American Defense Ministry ordered to develop an administrative language which was easy to read and write (in english). In 1960 the first proposal was ready (COBOL-60), it was prepared by a commission under the name of CODASYL (Conference On Data System Languages). They will guide the future developments of COBOL. Quickly the updates and extended versions followed, COBOL-61 and COBOL-61-EXTENDED. In 1968 COBOL-68 was standardize by ISO. In 1974 ANSI defines the ANS-COBOL-74 and in 1985 the ANS-COBOL-85

COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was released in 1959. It was the first language to be developed by a group of competitors working together with the objective of developing a language that would be usable on computers from each of the manufacturers. IBM, Burroughs, RCA, Remington Rand and others were all involved with it's development. It is one of the most widely used programming languages and is still used today for business applications.

Language Specifications

see above

Chronology