Apparently Java is becoming the new COBOL (see http://bit.ly/YiGrU)

Coming from someone working for a COBOL company you might expect a certain point of view - and I'm not going to disappoint! I suspect the article was trying to associate Java with the perceived weaknesses (only perceived, definitely not real) of COBOL - being "old fashioned" and slow to embrace new technologies.

However, I will offer some defence of Java and take this comparison with COBOL as a positive thing - it has tried to replicate the amazing success of COBOL in several ways:

• Common language across many, many platforms
• "Write once, run anywhere" (but remember Micro Focus was doing this with COBOL Intermediate Code in the mid-1970s - way before Java byte code became popular)
• A huge infrastructure of supporting tools, training, staff, etc.

It was these attributes that made Gartner put COBOL in the "mature" category a little while ago - not aging. Definitely not a bad thing - this is what commercial organizations need, especially in these challenging times. If Java can do the same, then it is being successful.

However, Java did drop the ball in a number of key areas where COBOL is still superior:

• True cross-platform compatibility - a strong standards organization enforce source compatibility.
  
• Keeping the language current - a single vendor with little/no competition doesn't move the language forward quickly enough. The commuity process was supposed to make things faster but, in effect, the move forward has stalled.
• Incompatible run time engines and complexity of systems such J2EE have hampered deployments. JVMs from different vendors had too many quirks to allow application vendors to safely assume their application would be of high quality/performance on every platform
  
• Now that the language is essentially owned by a database company, what's going to happen next?
  

This isn't intended to a Java-bashing article. Far from it, I think it still has a lot of life and has value but I think it's worth remembering that COBOL has been, and continues to be, wildly successful and if Java can get close to that, then good luck to it.