Libraries which are concerned about the possibility of obsolescence in programming languages used by turnkey library system vendors will be heartened by the views of a professor of computer science. John Lee of Virginia Polytechnic says, "Today's languages will be in use for the rest of the century." Professor Lee bases his view on the high cost of compiler writing and the slowness of new language acceptance. Ninety percent of the people in programming know only one language and don't want to learn another. Academics compound the inertia by teaching FORTRAN, COBOL, and PL/l says Lee. Furthermore, major corporations will not accept a new language until there is a substantial supply of programmers trained in its use.
The only new language for minis and mainframes that has gained recent acceptance is PASCAL which has been widely taught in academic institutions. The success of the language stems from its original design as a tool for teaching good programming habits, rather than through a concerted attempt to introduce it as a new language. The. existence of thousands of people qualified to program PASCAL led to the development of the compilers-the computer programs used to translate other computer programs from a high-level language into machine language.
Lees's views were confirmed by recent meetings on the revision of the standards for COBOL. A number of major users argued that the costs of implementing changes would far outweigh the benefits derived from any new standard. Implementation of the last major revision in COBOL cost one major insurance company over $1 million. Given those kinds of costs in changing the standards for a language, there might be little sympathy for a complete change of language.
None the less, there is seemingly a conflicting trend. According to a recently published manual from the Department of Defense, interest in ADA is building. This new language was developed for the military and is about to be adopted as an ANSI standard language. Several companies have announced their intention to market ADA compilers. The great appeal of the new language is its programmer efficiency and flexibility.
