[MelvinButtsESQ]

COBOL is easy. JCL is the hard part.

[cratermoon]

COBOL is good for dealing with money because it was built with the sort of numeric types required as a natural part of the language. Popular programming languages treat them as an afterthought and provide awkward library functions, if they have anything at all.

[AndrewDucker]

C# has Decimal built in. Enough precision for any money-related calculation.

[ElectricalUnion]

Lots of languages have Decimals (and arbitrary precision integers for another example) builtin, but they're usually never the default.

[cratermoon]

Which of the top 10 languages from the Tiobe index have a decimal type baked* into the language?

* Is a type in the standard library "baked in"? I lean towards no, but I'll give the language A for effort anyway.

[AndrewDucker]

  1) Python - added to the standard library in 2003.
  2) C - no.
  3) Java - BigDecimal in the standard library.
  4) C++ - no.
  5) C# - built in.
  6) VB - Currency type kinda does what you'd want, but   doesn't scale down very far.
  7) Javascript - no.  (Use https://github.com/MikeMcl/bignumber.js)
  8) SQL - Yes.  But check your dialect.
  9) PHP - No.
  10) Go - No.  (Use https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/shopspring/decimal)

[JohnFen]

shiver

That's a fact. A couple of years ago, I had to brush off my JCL skills for a job. It reminded me of why I was so happy when I didn't have to use JCL anymore.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

On the bright side, you can generate all your JCL with Rexx.

[bitfhacker]

Or with chatGPT!!