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>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.

Actually, there is a formal, standardized COBOL, not from the community, but from a standards organization. The efforts to standardize xBase fell flat several years ago.

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>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.
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Don't forget Microsoft's IronPython implementation.