The COBOL programming language was created in 1959 and has been widely seen as obsolete for decades. Yet there are still a fair number of software systems based on the language. The economic stresses ...

With states issuing pleas for volunteer coders, we set out to learn more about the woman-invented language powering the mainframe computers that process unemployment claims, and why there’s a shortage ...

The share of searches per million for the programming language COBOL on the job site Indeed grew 707% during the coronavirus crisis. While job seekers are interested in the language — largely used for ...

Sometimes, technology is a reasonable excuse for a holdup. But in the case of the unemployment benefits that are part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, processing delays are not due to a glitch, but the ...

Here's an unexpected side effect of the pandemic: increased demand for COBOL programmers. The need seems to be particularly acute among states whose unemployment systems were originally written in the ...

On top of ventilators, face masks and health care workers, you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic. In New Jersey, ...

Discussions of Social Security Administration (SSA) fraud from Elon Musk have prompted criticism over the federal government's use of COBOL, a software system that critics consider outdated. Musk ...

New research on the global scale of the COBOL programming language suggests that there are upwards of 800 billion lines of COBOL code being used by organizations and institutes worldwide, some three ...

Get the latest federal technology news delivered to your inbox. The time has come to invest in the federal government's IT infrastructure. Over the last five years, government has taken significant ...

Get the latest federal technology news delivered to your inbox. In the wake of COVID-19, our world has been upended. From the indefinite closures of all nonessential businesses to a mass shift to ...

Bill Hinshaw's phone has been ringing off the hook lately. From his home in Gainesville, Texas, which Hinshaw describes as "horse country," he runs a group called the COBOL Cowboys. It's an ...