WASHINGTON — Most states – including those in the D.C. area, use a 60-year-old computer language called COBOL to run unemployment department computers. That’s according to a national association ...

Under the last coronavirus stimulus package signed into law late last year, each state was responsible for implementing federal unemployment extensions for people who lost their jobs in the pandemic.

You’d think a computer programming language created in 1959 would be outdated — but you’d be incredibly wrong. Most people know Java and C++, but good ol’ COBOL is still alive and kicking. In the US, ...

With states issuing pleas for volunteer coders, we set out to learn more about the woman-invented language powering the mainframe computers that process unemployment claims, and why there’s a shortage ...

Sometimes, technology is a reasonable excuse for a holdup. But in the case of the unemployment benefits that are part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, processing delays are not due to a glitch, but the ...

(Updated 4/10: IBM and the Linux Foundation have partnered to set up a portal for both experienced and new COBOL coders to share resources and find opportunities. Here's a link to IBM's press release ...

Damian Dovarganes / AP The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed aging, inflexible computer systems at the heart of the U.S. economy — and a shortage of experts to fix the problem. This is slowing the ...

We did a piece the other day about how learning the ancient programming language COBOL could make you bank. It was meant as a fun little article about the weird fact that large parts of our banking ...

Ventilators, retired doctors, N95 face masks — all have been in high demand from heads of state and U.S. governors, but now you can add COBOL programmers to that pandemic response list. That's right, ...

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will explore the invention of the COBOL computer-programming language on its 50th anniversary in a display ...

The computer language known as Cobol turns 60 this year. Though not much is heard about the groundbreaking language these days, an estimated 80% of financial transactions still use Cobol. But as ...

The US Navy recalls Grace Murray Hopper to active duty. From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning ...