I was reading the CNet news article at http://news.com.com/100+years+of+Grace+Hopper/2100-1007_3-6142101.html and it reminded me of having to learn COBOL at University.  While it can be a pig to do graphics and other things in, it is a great language to write business applications.

COBOL for .Net exists, as do many, many libraries to make file, graphics and web services a reality.

There are even some small buziness apps written in COBOL as its ability to manage business rules and maintain integrity is still good.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still a .Net developer, but many of the good practices in development today have their heritage in COBOL (or Pascal ;-) )

So this is just a raised glass to the language that will never die (a bit like Mainframes).

ttfn

David