The world of information technology is a very fast moving one; very dynamic. Sometimes when I look back it amazes me how quickly things have changed. In fact some of the books I have in my library, which I bought some years back, are virtually irrelevant now. As a result, choosing sustainable tools and techniques for a task or process is a challenging task. This is especially true for professionals and practitioners who are rather conservative in their outlook to things.

I illustrate this with an experience I had several years ago. I attended a conference organized by Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) in the year 2000. It held at the Palm Royal Motel in Benin City, Nigeria. Many professors, doctors, university lecturers, IT consultants, IT professionals, and undergraduate students attended the conference.

Powerful papers were presented by leaders in both the academia and the IT industry. It was a wonderful programme indeed. Till this day I still have good memories of that event, because the talks and lectures were very educating and thought provoking. The highpoint of the conference was the paper presentation by a man called Dr. GMM Obi. At the time, he was one of the most highly revered information technology figures in the country; very highly respected because of his powerful track record both in Nigeria and across international boundaries.

Dr. GMM Obi was one of the people that sparked my interest in information technology (I had known him years earlier). Well, enough of the stories. I have decided to narrate all this details about Dr. Obi before telling you what he said which is the main point of this discuss. The paper Dr. GMM Obi presented was titled secret sharing schemes. It was based on a model he developed (I mean he invented the model and even patented it). You can see that he is no mean personality in IT.

I was intrigued by his lecture. Then he made a statement that surprised me. He said “in the whole world today, COBOL is still the most widely used programming language.” Up till this point the hall was absolutely silent as we all paid rapt attention to this iconic IT consultant. After making this statement, the undergraduate students screamed in disagreement. It took a while to calm them down. Every software developer would understand why these students disagreed with him.

The students did not agree because at the time students were already of the opinion that COBOL programming language was already outdated. The question is, was Dr. Obi right or wrong. Could such a man have been wrong? The answer is yes and no, depending on the perspective you choose to view the matter from. Among big advanced international consultants like Obi, it was true; but among the younger professionals things had changed a bit. Indeed things were beginning to change. There was a gradual declining trend regarding use of programming languages like COBOL, FORTRAN, etc. However, the big men of the profession at the time were not seeing it that way.

Personally I was concerned because it was a time when I was planning to migrate from VB to Java programming language. I had to carry out some research on the matter and I discovered that, truly, at that time most of the software being used by many of the largest corporations in the world were written in COBOL. In fact it was said that it would take huge sums of money (billions of dollars) to convert these software to modern languages like Java. However I also realized that there was a declining trend in the use of the old languages COBOL, etc.

It is very important to be forward looking when choosing tools for information technology work. There is need to adopt a tool or methodology that will still be valuable in the near or distant future. A little research will do to get the needed information. You can use google or any other search engine of your choice. Information technology is very dynamic. There is need to adopt or utilize standard and efficient tools. This calls for continuous learning. Personally, over the year, I have had to learn various programming languages and technologies along the line – COBOL, VB, .NET, PHP, C, C++, Java, Python, R, and more – and I am not about to give up. Like they say, he who is tired of learning is tired of living.

I wish you success in you information technology journey.

EFOSA OBASEKI,
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT