Mechanism◆Article
SQL made it possible to replace the work of expensive COBOL programmers with a simple specification language.
Hipp describes how SQL's convenience let anyone specify queries simply, eliminating the need for paid COBOL programmers to generate query code. ✦ AI generated
D. Richard Hipp · Simon Willison's Weblog · 2026-07-29 · original ↗
Then SQL comes along—I'm simplifying this only a little bit—and it gives you this convenient way so people could just specify. With a very simple specification, you can generate all of that code that you had to pay the expensive COBOL programmer to do before.
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- ·SQL let anyone specify queries with simple syntax
- ·Expensive COBOL programmers were no longer needed
- ·Query programming went from specialist to generalist
- ·A simple specification generates all that code
- ·Previously required paying an expensive COBOL programmer
- ·Convenience eliminated the specialist bottleneck
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