Re: [Q]: How many lines of Cobol running worldwide???

From: Thane Hubbell (thaneh_at_softwaresimple.com)
Date: 01/08/04 

Date: 7 Jan 2004 19:51:48 -0800

I personally think their estimate is low. I'm PERSONALLY responsible
for maintaining systems totalling over a million lines. And I'm just
one guy. Figure there are 6 million COBOL programmers (so I've heard)
and that's a LOT of lines of code. (Like 600 Billion). And my
million lines is a rough guess - I bet some people have MORE and
there's a lot that just runs - is not maintained at all.

"Francis ANDRE" <francis.andre@easynet.fr> wrote in message news:<3ffc9c3d$0$15344$afc38c87@news.easynet.fr>...
> It does not matter so much to count included lines by copy....compare to the
> figures I got from the net....My question is more to understand if the
> Gartner's evaluation is more or less close to the "reality"...200 billions
> of Cobol lines!!!
>
> 75% of business data is processed in COBOL (Source: Gartner).
> There are 180 billion to 200 billion lines of COBOL in use worldwide
> (Gartner).
> 15% of new applications are written in COBOL (Gartner).
> Replacement costs for COBOL systems estimated at $25 per line are in the
> hundreds of billions of dollars (Tactical Strategy Group).
>
> FA
>
>
> "Thane Hubbell" <thaneh@softwaresimple.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
> bfdfc3e8.0401071224.423c4e0b@posting.google.com...
> > You can also get into the whole "what's a line of code". Pre or post
> > copybook expansion? Comments - do they count? Etc etc...
> >
> > A relatively small system I maintain has 140,000 lines of code
> > precopybook expansion and including comments.
> >
> >
> > Arnold Trembley <arnold.trembley@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:<0zNKb.2083$Ub6.63921@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>...
> > > LX-i wrote:
> > > > Francis ANDRE wrote:
> > > > (snip)
> > > >> In my understanding from the various sources, it is counting in
> > > >> billions of
> > > >> lines....which is quite large in term of evaluation....Does anybody
> could
> > > >> give me more precise numbers, specially on past, present and future
> > > >> estimations??
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Billions sounds right to me. Our one little Air Force aircraft
> > > > maintenance system has about 1.2M, and the supply system we interface
> > > > with has close to 5M.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > In 1996, as part of a Y2K project, we counted up how many COBOL
> > > programs and lines of code we had in production in order to estimate
> > > the scope of our Y2K work. It worked to something like 4,500
> > > production programs and about 7 million lines of code. This was a
> > > shop with maybe 100 to 150 actual programmers. Of course, the number
> > > is a moving target as new programs are written, existing programs are
> > > enhanced (usually resulting in a slight increase in LOC), and even
> > > occasionally deleting an old program.
> > >
> > > I can easily believe the number would be in the billions just for the
> > > USA, but there's no way to actually count it. We missed some programs
> > > that weren't stored in the proper libraries.