If you are like most other programmers, you have probably been thinking about updating your technical skills. You have been hearing a lot about Java, object-oriented development, and Internet applications. These topics have been getting a tremendous amount of press lately. In the fanfare, you may have heard someone suggest that COBOL programmers will be obsolete and can't possibly make the switch to OO. Can this possibly be true? We don't think so.

We wrote this book because we believe it is important that you learn Java and OO development. Although we don't claim learning a new programming language is a trivial task, the fact that you already know COBOL gives you a head start on learning Java. Don't let what others say bother you.

We work with COBOL as consultants for industry, in our classrooms, and as authors. However, we also work with Java and object-oriented development. From our perspective, we believe COBOL and Java are highly complementary development tools in the evolving computing environment. COBOL does a great job of processing and maintaining a firm's data. Java plays an equally important role of capturing and reporting data by connecting clients to the server across a variety of networked computers, with little concern about the specific hardware and operating systems involved.