cobol
![Brian Piercy](data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="%230A66C2"><path d="M20.447 20.452H16.89v-5.569c0-1.328-.027-3.037-1.852-3.037-1.853 0-2.136 1.445-2.136 2.939v5.667H9.351V9h3.414v1.561h.046c.477-.9 1.637-1.85 3.37-1.85 3.601 0 4.267 2.37 4.267 5.455v6.286zM5.337 7.433a1.982 1.982 0 1 1 0-3.964 1.982 1.982 0 0 1 0 3.964zm1.782 13.019H3.555V9h3.564v11.452zM22.225 0H1.771C.792 0 0 .774 0 1.729v20.542C0 23.227.792 24 1.771 24h20.451C23.2 24 24 23.227 24 22.271V1.729C24 .774 23.2 0 22.222 0h.003z"/></svg>)
Investors wiped $40 billion from IBM's market cap after Anthropic released COBOL translation tools. Analysts say the market got the news right and the conclusion wrong.
In this deep-dive explainer, we look at a big-business mainstay.
Like other meta-platforms **the web thrives or declines to the extent it can accomplish the lion's share of the things we expect most computers to do**. Platform Adjacency Theory explains how to expand in a principled way and what we risk when natural expansion is prevented mechanisms that prevent effective competition.
Back in the dawn of time, which is four decades ago in computer science and which was before technical computing went mainstream with the advent of Unix