GCC 15, due for release in May 2025, for the first time includes COBOL among the languages it compiles. Alongside the venerable gcc and g++, there is now gcobol. The reader may well wonder why a small company would devote years of development to produce a product they don't own and can't sell. The reader might also wonder why GCC decided to include COBOL, and why anyone not retired would care. In short, what use is COBOL? To those questions and more, we have answers. As Mark Twain said of himself, news of COBOL's demise is much exaggerated. Industry studies show billions of lines of COBOL still in production. With a probability of 95%, your last ATM transaction went through a COBOL application. Nearly every large firm went through Y2K 25 years ago to add two digits to the date, to adapt their critical software to the 21st century. They didn't do that to throw it all away. COBOL was and remains useful because it was specifically designed for its problem domain. No language is better suited for nuts-and-bolts unglamorous data processing. For example, COBOL defines an I/O model, numerical precision, 8 forms of rounding, and over 100 runtime exceptions. Programming languages often have shallow, undeserved reputations. Lisp has too many parentheses, COBOL too many words, Perl is write-only. Let's talk about why COBOL remains viable and vital, and why it's now part of GCC. About James Lowden - Camden, ME Senior Architect, Symas Corporation, bringing COBOL to GCC Socials - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejkl/ - https://cobolworx.com/ - https://sessionize.com/jklowden James spent the first 30 years of his career on Wall Street in application programming, database design, and quantitative research. Now he's in pure technology, building compilers and systems for other programmers. After decades in Manhattan, his work life is now fully virtual, and his real life is on the Maine seacoast. Presented on August 15, 2025 at the Carolina Code Conference in Greenville, SC https://carolina.codes Sponsored by... Flywheel - https://www.flywheelgreenvillesc.com/ Vonage - https://developer.vonage.com/en/home Blue Ridge Consultants - https://www.blueridge.cx/ Organized by Brightball, Inc - https://www.brightball.com/

GCC 15, due for release in May 2025, for the first time includes COBOL among the languages it compiles. Alongside the venerable gcc and g++, there is now gcobol. The reader may well wonder why a small company would devote years of development to produce a product they don't own and can't sell. The reader might also wonder why GCC decided to include COBOL, and why anyone not retired would care. In short, what use is COBOL? To those questions and more, we have answers. As Mark Twain said of himself, news of COBOL's demise is much exaggerated. Industry studies show billions of lines of COBOL still in production. With a probability of 95%, your last ATM transaction went through a COBOL application. Nearly every large firm went through Y2K 25 years ago to add two digits to the date, to adapt their critical software to the 21st century. They didn't do that to throw it all away. COBOL was and remains useful because it was specifically designed for its problem domain. No language is better suited for nuts-and-bolts unglamorous data processing. For example, COBOL defines an I/O model, numerical precision, 8 forms of rounding, and over 100 runtime exceptions. Programming languages often have shallow, undeserved reputations. Lisp has too many parentheses, COBOL too many words, Perl is write-only. Let's talk about why COBOL remains viable and vital, and why it's now part of GCC. About James Lowden - Camden, ME Senior Architect, Symas Corporation, bringing COBOL to GCC Socials - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejkl/ - https://cobolworx.com/ - https://sessionize.com/jklowden James spent the first 30 years of his career on Wall Street in application programming, database design, and quantitative research. Now he's in pure technology, building compilers and systems for other programmers. After decades in Manhattan, his work life is now fully virtual, and his real life is on the Maine seacoast. Presented on August 15, 2025 at the Carolina Code Conference in Greenville, SC https://carolina.codes Sponsored by... Flywheel - https://www.flywheelgreenvillesc.com/ Vonage - https://developer.vonage.com/en/home Blue Ridge Consultants - https://www.blueridge.cx/ Organized by Brightball, Inc - https://www.brightball.com/

GCC 15, due for release in May 2025, for the first time includes COBOL among the languages it compiles. Alongside the venerable gcc and g++, there is now gcobol. The reader may well wonder why a small company would devote years of development to produce a product they don't own and can't sell. The reader might also wonder why GCC decided to include COBOL, and why anyone not retired would care. In short, what use is COBOL? To those questions and more, we have answers. As Mark Twain said of himself, news of COBOL's demise is much exaggerated. Industry studies show billions of lines of COBOL still in production. With a probability of 95%, your last ATM transaction went through a COBOL application. Nearly every large firm went through Y2K 25 years ago to add two digits to the date, to adapt their critical software to the 21st century. They didn't do that to throw it all away. COBOL was and remains useful because it was specifically designed for its problem domain. No language is better suited for nuts-and-bolts unglamorous data processing. For example, COBOL defines an I/O model, numerical precision, 8 forms of rounding, and over 100 runtime exceptions. Programming languages often have shallow, undeserved reputations. Lisp has too many parentheses, COBOL too many words, Perl is write-only. Let's talk about why COBOL remains viable and vital, and why it's now part of GCC. About James Lowden - Camden, ME Senior Architect, Symas Corporation, bringing COBOL to GCC Socials - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejkl/ - https://cobolworx.com/ - https://sessionize.com/jklowden James spent the first 30 years of his career on Wall Street in application programming, database design, and quantitative research. Now he's in pure technology, building compilers and systems for other programmers. After decades in Manhattan, his work life is now fully virtual, and his real life is on the Maine seacoast. Presented on August 15, 2025 at the Carolina Code Conference in Greenville, SC https://carolina.codes Sponsored by... Flywheel - https://www.flywheelgreenvillesc.com/ Vonage - https://developer.vonage.com/en/home Blue Ridge Consultants - https://www.blueridge.cx/ Organized by Brightball, Inc - https://www.brightball.com/