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A comment on Why Is C Faster Than Java (2009). Parent comment

Re:Why Is C Faster Than Java (2009) by yjftsjthsd-h on Monday December 27, 2021 @10:31AM (#29703261)
> we don’t pretend COBOL’s vestigial existence is owed to its merits rather than a quirk of history.

Um. COBOL survived so long specifically because it did some things better than alternatives, mostly around how it handled numbers. Yes, also inertia and historical accident, but also because it was actually good at its job.

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Re:Why Is C Faster Than Java (2009) by throwaway894345 on Monday December 27, 2021 @11:37AM (#29703909)
It beat out others of its day on merit, as did C, but we’re talking about C and COBOL competing against modern languages in a modern landscape. In other words, COBOL’s dominance in the 60s was due to merit, but it’s vestigial existence today is a historical artifact—it isn’t simply the best language for the application.
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