Dan Poirier
Caktus Changing from Django to New COBOL-based Framework
Beginning immediately, Caktus will build new projects using our new COBOL-based framework, ADD COBOL TO WEB.
Time-tested
We've come to realize that new-fangled languages like Python (1989) offer nothing that more time-tested languages such as COBOL (1959) cannot. We're tired of trying to keep up with the latest, greatest thing (Django, 2003). Accordingly, we're going back to old, reliable COBOL.
Flexible and Powerful
COBOL provides us with flexibility and power that Python cannot match. A statement like "ALTER X PROCEED TO Y" can remotely modify a GO TO statement in procedure X to target a completely different place in the program!
Straightforward
Here's "Hello, world" in COBOL:
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. hello-world.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
DISPLAY "Hello, world!"
.
What could be simpler? Statements are terminated by periods, which we've been used to since childhood. No pesky parentheses, just write DISPLAY "Hello, world!" and the program displays Hello, world!.
COBOL for the Web
Of course, COBOL pre-dates the web, so it doesn't come with support for building websites. We have therefore developed a new framework, ADD COBOL TO WEB, that links COBOL to this new-fangled (1989) web.
We take full advantage of COBOL's built-in templating facilities: the PICTURE clause and the Report Writer. This is ideal for table output:
01 sales-on-day TYPE DETAIL, LINE + 1.
03 COL 3 VALUE "Sales on".
03 COL 12 PIC 99/99/9999 SOURCE sales-date.
03 COL 21 VALUE "were".
03 COL 26 PIC $$$$9.99 SOURCE sales-amount.
And the application to generating HTTP responses and HTML content is, of course, obvious.
Open Source
We plan to share the complete source for ADD COBOL TO WEB as soon as someone ports git to COBOL.
Customer Benefit
Our customers will appreciate our use of long-established tools to build their websites, with future maintainability guaranteed by the many COBOL programmers in the workforce.
IBM System 370, image by Oliver.obi via Wikimedia Commons.
Future Plans
We recently picked up an IBM 370 from eBay and are arranging shipping, and additional power to our office basement. We've been assured the 370 was state-of-the-art for COBOL in its day, and can compile literally tens of statements per minute. Once our business takes off, we'll be able to afford a 256 KB memory expansion to speed it up even more!
Also, keep an eye on our job postings. We will soon be looking for experienced mainframe operators who can help us deploy our new applications.
