As if anyone in tune with enterprise-class programming didn’t already know… While Arnold Schwarzenegger’s efforts to cut state employees salaries has sparked press reports liking COBOL to ancient hieroglyphics, Gartner says there are 180 billion lines of COBOL code in use and some 90,000 COBOL programmers worldwide. COBOL: Back from the dead. “It’s worth remembering that older languages, and yes, older programmers, still play an important role in IT,” Bill Snyder writes. “One can imagine that there aren’t a lot of state employees beating on Schwarzenegger’s door to fix the problem and nuke their own paychecks.” Software Development