Talk:COBOL

COBOL was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
May 16, 2014	Peer review	Not reviewed
February 2, 2015	Peer review	Reviewed
February 10, 2015	Good article nominee	Listed
June 16, 2024	Good article reassessment	Delisted
A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on April 8, 2019.
Current status: Delisted good article

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Index

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GA Reassessment

COBOL

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: No improvement Real4jyy (talk) 05:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article contains a bloated lede (as well as other sections), an orange tag outlining missing information from 2021, and many uncited statements. I posted my concerns on the article talk page, but there was no response. Z1720 (talk) 15:37, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

COBOL syntax designed for "management" to read

Is there any evidence of this in COBOL's design record? The 1960 report says "The COBOL System allows the user to prepare his specifications for the problem solution in the language most natural to him - namely English," and "[The procedure division] allows the user to express his thoughts in meaningful English.… That is, any user of COBOL can understand the information appearing in this division without regard to any particular computer." There is no clear reference to management here, but rather to high-level programmers essentially as they exist today. It's misleading to call such people "management" only because they oversaw human compilers before they had automatic ones. When I worked as an electrical engineer, the fact that I handed off soldering work to technicians did not make me their manager. 2601:642:4F84:1590:2438:9E10:1872:2571 (talk) 00:45, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

paragraph 3 & 4

These paragraphs are less interpretable by layman if anyone wants to move them and tidy up the lede paragraphs. Since this is a GA complaint, I may even come back and do it myself after reading the article.FourLights (talk) 00:12, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

legacy

"The relative influence of the languages that were used is still indicated in the recommended advisory printed in all COBOL reference manuals"

Does this refer to cobol more generally or the cobol section it's under??FourLights (talk) FourLights (talk) 00:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]