COBOL

since 1959 (earliest usage recorded on this site was 1976)

COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.

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bhaugen

lawley

brucehoult

undoingemptyvoid

cherimullins

vangale

takitimu

abtin

jeffself

jorjun

cdeblois

MarkofCain

Atrujillo

acdha

sbastn

leveille

gsiegman

madewulf

notanumber

floyd

binarydud

mdridley

Josh

trey

daniellindsley

anoop

bhaugen - 12 years

lawley - 33 years

brucehoult - 2 years

undoingemptyvoid - 6 years

cherimullins - 4 years

vangale - 1 years

takitimu - 2 years

abtin - 1 years

jeffself - 2 years

jorjun - 2 years

cdeblois - 5 years

MarkofCain - 18 years

Atrujillo - 3 years

acdha - 3 years

sbastn - 2 years

leveille - 2 years

gsiegman - 1 years

madewulf - 1 years

af - 2 years

notanumber - 1 years

floyd - 2 years

binarydud - 1 years

mdridley - 1 years

Josh - 1 years

trey - 2 years

daniellindsley - 2 years

anoop - 1 years

bhaugen

1976–1987

On IBM 360's using punch cards, and (much later) HP 3000's.

lawley

1980–

brucehoult

1982–1983

At university in 1982, and then, conveniently, commercially for a summer holiday job 1982/1983.

undoingemptyvoid

1983–1988

Used in college for one semester then eventually at my second job wrote some COBOL code to test our HDBMS API. Never wrote any non-academic applications in it, don't like it.

cherimullins

1984–1987

vangale

1985

Worked on a COBOL project for 7 months. Managed to find a new assignment after the project manager asked me to stop using dynamic memory allocation because "it was too tricky" (this was a non-standard feature in Wang VS COBOL).

takitimu

1987–1988

University business course, horrible language.

abtin

1987

jeffself

1988–1989

Actually had to take 2 courses in this while in college. Swore I would never use this in a job. To this day, I haven't.

jorjun

1989–1990

Nasty, and nobody would like to admit this one, but a fair number of large corporations loved it. Hence it was on the curriculum at Polytechnics.

cdeblois

1990–1994

Purely educational.

MarkofCain

1995–

sbastn

1996–1997

Worked on a banking app for a few months and built a full video store app with this. Almost went blind because of this language: ALL CAPS CODE and thousand lines methods. It took me years to recover from this...

acdha

1996–1998

If you ever saw AcuCobol running in a browser, I'm to blame

leveille

1996–1997

My experience with Cobol is limited to my exposure in a CS class.

Atrujillo

1996–1998

RM-COBOL

gsiegman

1997

For school. This language almost made me hate programming.