COBOL is not dead -- though this might surprise computer whizzkids born after 1980. In fact Common Business Oriented Language, to expand the acronym, was one of the first ever computer languages written in language close to English, rather than in machine code of numbers and letters, and is fifty years old this week. India is the last home of COBOL -- remember it was Indian expertise in the language that made this country famous as the place to come to, if you wanted to avoid the Y2K problem at the turn of the century...Indian outsourcing was born out that reputation as COBOL whizzes. A survey commissioned by MicroFocus finds the world hardly remembers COBOL today, although 60-80 percent of enterprises still depend on COBOL and lay users of credit cards, ATMs and cell phones may not know that it drives their application. So let's say salaam, to Grace Hopper, ( 1906-1992) the woman who inspired and wrote the first specification for, COBOL in May 1959, when she was working with the US Dept of Defence. This early computing pioneer, went on to become Rear Admiral, USN. We shall remember her simply as Grandma Cobol. See celebratory video this week only, in our Tech Video slot, on the "Cobolator"