This OLD Programming Language STILL Rules the World

Key Takeaways

This programming language was supposed to die 20 years ago and is still running the world. In 1959, the Department of Defense was spending $200 million maintaining programs across 175 different computers. It just was unmaintainable. A Pentagon meeting was held in May of 1959 and launched an effort to come up with a concept for a programming language that could run across many computers in only 3 months. Easy. Have these guys heard of Cloud Code before? Surprisingly, they did it and created the idea for Cobalt. One year later, it would run on an RCA501. Cobalt was revolutionary code that ran on different machines, syntax that looked like English instead of math. Long variable names. I know it sounds trivial, but it mattered. Someone said in 1960, "It is rather unlikely that Cobalt will be around by the end of the decade." About that, Cobalt is still running in banks. The IRS, Social Security, it was literally why CO relief funds got delayed. The latest release is Cobalt 2023 with features like asynchronous messaging. Cobalt isn't dying anytime soon, it seems. Fall for more.