Interesting COBOL History
Eleven Labrador
COBOL had little interest in the academic aspects of their work. The May 1962 issue of the Communications of the ACM was devoted to 13 papers describing COBOL and related issues. Every article was written by an industry or government person. These people did not have the academic frame of mind that involves referencing previous and related work; only four of the papers had any references. Sociologists of science who use citations to trace the flow of ideas would recognize this pattern as an indicator of intellectual separatism.
