>Cobol was "dead" over 20 years ago, but it's still here.
>The difference is that Cobol was a language supported
>by dozens of developer tools on multiple platforms.

The difference I see is COBOL was developed by not by a software vendor but by the user community. There is a formal standard for COBOL that is largely driven by the user community, not the software vendor. If you don't want to be whipsawed by a software vendor then choose something like COBOL, JAVA, Python, etc. and accept the compromises you just bought in to.

Personally, I'm keeping my eye on Python; especially since I see it works with IBM's AS400 (oops, now the "iSeries"), along with Linux, Unix, Windows, MAC, and more.

JMHO,

Scott