BabyCobol is a project in software language design aimed at creating a language that is, on one hand, small enough to be quickly implementable (fully or partially) within any framework that can support its features, and, on the other hand, complex enough to cover typical problems of legacy language processing. If you learn how to compile MiniJava, you stand a good chance of implementing a reasonably good compiler for any contemporary programming language. If you show how your language extension works on Featherweight Java, it has a good chance of being applicable to any reasonable modern object-oriented programming language. If you can handle BabyCobol with your tool and with your skills, you are ready to face the challenges of software modernisation, codebase migration and legacy language processing in general. At this day and age, being future proof means being able to handle software of the past.
Mentions and uses
- Vadim Zaytsev, Software Evolution, a CBL-based flipped course, Universiteit Twente, 22 April 2026 – 20 July 2026
- Vadim Zaytsev, Software Evolution, a CBL-based flipped course, Universiteit Twente, 23 April 2025 – 28 July 2025
- Vadim Zaytsev, Software Evolution, a CBL-based flipped course, Universiteit Twente, 7 February 2024 – 16 April 2024
- 📜 Mart van Assen, Aimé Ntagengerwa, Ömer Sayilir, Vadim Zaytsev. Crossover: Towards Compiler-Enabled COBOL-C Interoperability, GPCE 2023, 22–23 October 2023. (DOI)
- Vadim Zaytsev, Software Evolution, a CBL-based flipped course, Universiteit Twente, 8 February 2023 – 6 July 2023
- Vadim Zaytsev, Legacy and Software Renovation, Software Evolution guest lecture, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 28 November 2022
- Vadim Zaytsev, Software Evolution, a CBL-based flipped course, Universiteit Twente, 9 February 2022 – 22 April 2022
- Vadim Zaytsev, Legacy and Software Renovation, Software Evolution guest lecture, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 29 November 2021
- Vadim Zaytsev, Software Evolution, a CBL-based flipped course, Universiteit Twente, 3 February 2021 – 23 June 2021
- UTwente EEMCS Faculty, Formal Methods and Tools, Manfred Paul Award for Vadim Zaytsev, a news item, 3 February 2021
- 🏆 IFIP TC2, Manfred Paul Award for Excellence in Software Theory and Practice “for boldness in seeking real-world test cases for modern software language engineering tools by mining languages from the distant past”, 22 December 2020
- Vadim Zaytsev, Legacy and Software Renovation, Software Evolution guest lecture, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 30 November 2020
- 📜 Vadim Zaytsev, Software Language Engineers’ Worst Nightmare, a paper published at SLE 2020, (DOI), 15–16 November 2020
- Vadim Zaytsev, Software Language Engineers’ Worst Nightmare, a pre-recorded presentation at SLE@SPLASH, 13 November 2020
- Bernd Fischer, Breaking Parsers: Mutation-based Generation of Programs with Guaranteed Syntax Errors, IFIP TC-2 WG 2.11 on Program Generation, invited/impromptu presentation, Sorbonne Université, 20 February 2020 (first implementation of BabyCobol in Prolog capable of generating hundreds of BabyCobol programs)
- 📚 Vadim Zaytsev, BabyCobol: The Language Reference. 18 February 2020
- Vadim Zaytsev, BabyCobol: The Challenge to Program Generation Tool Developers, IFIP TC-2 WG 2.11 on Program Generation, invited presentation, Sorbonne Université, 17 February 2020
- Vadim Zaytsev, Legacy and Software Renovation, Software Evolution guest lecture, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 9 December 2019
- Vadim Zaytsev, Blind Men and a Room Full of Elephants, BENEVOL 2019 keynote, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), 28 November 2019
BabyCobol
