Resumen
This article focuses on the computer programming language Cobol. Today roughly two-thirds of programmers use Cobol. The second-place language (variously said to be C, Fortran, or RPG) is (a) very far behind, and (b) has a decade-dependent identity. Other programming languages come and go;. none has survived and been as successful as Cobol. However Cobol is the most criticized language in software development and maintenance. The usual reason given for this contradiction is that software practitioners are an incredibly stubborn lot, stuck in place and refusing to change. In this view, it is the intransigence of those in the trenches that has man- aged to keep poor old Cobol alive for its over 40 year life span, in spite of the wisdom and knowledge of everyone else in the field. There are several reasons that make Cobol more usable. Cobol has the capability for heterogeneous, "record-structure" data. Secondly it has the capability for decimal arithmetic and convenient report generation.