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  5. COBOL vs PHP

COBOL vs PHP

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

PHP
PHP
Stacks147.4K
Followers82.9K
Votes4.6K
GitHub Stars39.6K
Forks8.0K
COBOL
COBOL
Stacks130
Followers147
Votes2

COBOL vs PHP: What are the differences?

Introduction

This markdown code provides a comparison between COBOL and PHP, highlighting their key differences.

  1. Syntax: COBOL uses a verbose and English-like syntax, making it easier for non-programmers to understand and read the code. On the other hand, PHP uses a more concise and C-like syntax, which is familiar to most programmers.

  2. Purpose: COBOL was primarily designed for business data processing, especially in mainframe environments, focusing on structured programming and batch processing. In contrast, PHP is a general-purpose scripting language mainly used for web development, particularly focused on server-side scripting.

  3. Age and Popularity: COBOL is an older language, dating back to the 1950s, and is still commonly used in large legacy systems in industries like finance and government. PHP, on the other hand, was created in the 1990s and quickly gained popularity for its simplicity and web-focused features.

  4. Data Types: COBOL has a relatively limited set of data types and provides specific types for handling financial calculations, such as money and decimal types. PHP, on the other hand, has a larger variety of built-in data types, including integers, floats, strings, and arrays, making it more versatile for general-purpose programming.

  5. Object-Oriented Programming: COBOL has limited support for object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts and primarily follows a procedural programming paradigm. PHP, on the other hand, fully supports OOP and provides features like classes, objects, inheritance, and polymorphism, making it suitable for complex, modular programming.

  6. Platform Independence: COBOL programs are typically compiled to machine code specific to the target platform, making them less portable across different systems. In contrast, PHP scripts can run on any web server with PHP support, regardless of the underlying platform, enabling better portability.

In summary, COBOL and PHP differ in their syntax, purpose, age/popularity, data types, support for object-oriented programming, and platform independence.

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Advice on PHP, COBOL

Kyle
Kyle

Web Application Developer at Fortinet

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

Node continues to be dominant force in the world of web apps, with it's signature async first non-blocking IO, and frankly mind bending speeds. PHP and Python are formable tools, I chose Node for the simplicity of Express as a good and performant server side API gateway platform, that works well with Angular.

394k views394k
Comments
Octavian
Octavian

Software Engineer

May 26, 2020

Decided

Both PHP and Python are free but when it comes to web development PHP wins for sure. There is no doubt that Python is a powerful language but it is not optimal for web. PHP has issues... of course; but so does any other language.

Another reason I chose PHP is for community - it has one of the most resourceful communities from the internet and for a good reason: it evolved with the language itself.

The fact that OOP evolved so much in PHP makes me keep it for good :)

377k views377k
Comments
Davit
Davit

Apr 11, 2020

Needs advice

Hi everyone, I have just started to study web development, so I'm very new in this field. I would like to ask you which tools are most updated and good to use for getting a job in medium-big company. Front-end is basically not changing by time so much (as I understood by researching some info), so my question is about back-end tools. Which backend tools are most updated and requested by medium-big companies (I am searching for immediate job possibly)?

Thank you in advance Davit

390k views390k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

PHP
PHP
COBOL
COBOL

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

COBOL was one of the first programming languages to be standardised: the first COBOL standard was issued by ANSI in 1968. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
39.6K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
8.0K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
147.4K
Stacks
130
Followers
82.9K
Followers
147
Votes
4.6K
Votes
2
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 954
    Large community
  • 820
    Open source
  • 767
    Easy deployment
  • 488
    Great frameworks
  • 387
    The best glue on the web
Cons
  • 21
    So easy to learn, good practices are hard to find
  • 16
    Inconsistent API
  • 8
    Fragmented community
  • 6
    Not secure
  • 3
    Hard to debug
Pros
  • 2
    Business Oriented Language
Cons
  • 2
    Extremely long code for simple functions
Integrations
Laravel
Laravel
JavaScript
JavaScript
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to PHP, COBOL?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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