I truly enjoyed the discussion and debate. Without a doubt each language has a contribution in the enterprise IT solution arena.
I believe COBOL is an unsung hero of business landscape living up to expectations of the business community for many decades. In my opinion Java ('Jakarta') and JVM has not lived up to original promises which was glossed over quickly during the discussion.
COBOL
- Original rules based engine for business subject to a community standards committee
- Designed for human readability which is extremely important in financial world audit function
- Designed for financial math which was discussed with a very interesting twist related to Java (below)
Java
- Original promise discussed 'write once, run anywhere' - most agreed that is far from a realized promise.
- Discussed was Java and Java EE are different and most likely not understood by many Java programmers.
- IBM Z ability to direct Java workload to zIIP to control software costs was nearly mandatory because Java performance (memory, CPU, garbage collection) is not close to compiled a COBOL executable even with IBM's well architected JVM (which is excellent).
- Great comment about it might be possible to get Java to approach the financial mathematics accuracy of COBOL if programmer is a highly experienced Java programmer.
While I believe Java EE has its fit for purpose place in industry, I believe COBOL long contribution to large enterprise business is beyond Java / Jakarta.
I had a hard time grasping "object oriented programming". Programmer thinking and programmer mindset is very different - objects vs control flow. However, I felt somewhat dumb and ashamed to admit it until I read Linus Torvalds thoughts about Java and JVM. Linus was able to articulate how I felt about Java. Linus is very opinionated as most good technicians.
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Paul Newton
Consulting IT Specialist
IBM
Coppell TX
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Original Message:
Sent: Thu May 18, 2023 03:37 PM
From: Sabine Diemt
Subject: COBOL vs. Java
Hello Mainframers (to be),
Yesterday, we had another highly interesting discussion. The topic was COBOL vs. Java.
In the COBOL corner of this epic match were the one and only IBM Lifetime Champion @Dusty Rivers as well as IBM Champion Herbert Daly. In the Java corner were IBM Champion @Wolfram Greis and IBMer @Marc Beyerle. The referees were @Noor EL-Hawwat and @Sabine Diemt.
Here are the links that we have shared with you:
IBM Z Xplore: https://ibmzxplore.influitive.com/join/ambassadorreferral
IBM zSystems Global Student Hub: http://ibm.biz/studenthub
Is COBOL holding you hostage with Math? https://medium.com/the-technical-archaeologist/is-cobol-holding-you-hostage-with-math-5498c0eb428b
IBM Automatic Binary Optimizer for z/OS (ABO): https://www.ibm.com/products/automatic-binary-optimizer-zos
Java EE / Jakarta: https://jakarta.ee/
Additional resources shared by our speakers:
Kill It with Fire: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667571/kill-it-with-fire-by-marianne-bellotti/
To the members of the Budget Council (Edsger W. Dijkstra): https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/OtherDocs/Haskell.html
Modern Mainframe Development: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/modern-mainframe-development/9781098107017/
Accelerate Mainframe Application Modernization with Hybrid Cloud: https://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp5705.html
Another resource shared by the audience:
z/Architecture - Principles of Operation: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/SSQ2R2_15.0.0/com.ibm.tpf.toolkit.hlasm.doc/dz9zr006.pdf
Last but not least: The recording of the session is available on our IBM zSystems Ambassador YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiMINRX95p0
We look forward to any additional questions you may have and post here, as well as some takeaways you'd like to share with us.
Thank you for having joined our lively discussion!
Sabine
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Sabine Diemt
Student
FernUniversität Hagen
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