[nospam.list@unclassified.de: Re: COBOL compiler]
----- Forwarded message from Yves Goergen <nospam.list@unclassified.de> -----
> From: "Yves Goergen" <nospam.list@unclassified.de>
> To: "Debian-User" <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
> Subject: Re: COBOL compiler
> Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 17:24:12 +0200
> X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
> Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
>
> Von: "Ron Johnson" <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>
> > On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 08:50, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> > > At 2003-08-26T12:52:33Z, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> writes:
> > >
> > > > Too bad you have such a negative view of COBOL. In the hands of someone
> > > > with a brain, it's quite a powerful and modular language.
> > >
> > > All Turing-complete languages are equally powerful. That doesn't mean that
> > > any given one would fill me with a desire to start hacking around with it.
> > >
> > > You know, I'd never seen Cobol before the screenshots on your link. Those
> > > just confirmed everything I've heard about it. :)
> >
> > For a "Hello, World" program, or an OS, or a graphics toolkit, even
> > Admiral Hooper would not say that COBOL is the proper tool. OTOH,
> > for large commercial apps, COBOL is far and away the best tool for
> > the job.
>
> ehm, at my work, they have a real big host system. from what i've heard, it's programming language is cobol, running under a specific IBM OS. i don't know a lot of that stuff, but there'll be some good reasons why IBM did that.
>
> but my father (he knows cobol very well...) had massive problems
> coming from cobol (DOS) to some more current windows
> programming. from cobol, he has never seen
> multi-tasking/multi-threading concepts nor (graphical) windows, a
> mouse or even such principal programming language conepts as
> functions (!). one must imagine, how can cobol be an easy to
> understand and to maintain language if you're by design supposed to
> write spaghetti code like it was once in gwbasic?
You are not "supposed" to write spaghetti code, but is certainly
possible.
When I was programming COBOL (there is no such thing as cobol BTW) for
a living, almost 30 years ago, we very well knew how to build
well-structured code.
>
> IMHO any C/pascal-like language or partially still (visual) basic
> seems far more fiendly to me. and i was involved in the developemt
> of some bigger (partly commercial) applications now, and i must say
> that VB and VC++ are very good tools for such.
They seem more friendly because you are more familiar with them. I
know people who feel exactly the opposite.
No COBOL doesn't scale up particularly well (although the largest
program I wrote in the language had 5,000 of PROCEDURE DIVISION) but
neither do the C family nor the pascal family.
There is no such thing as a universal programming language,
well-suited to all tasks - IBM tried to create one 40 year ago, it was
PL/1.
>
> and, yes - i'm a student, too..... (you may think of me what you stated above, it may be right or not)
I'm afraid that he is correct that students do not have the
perspective that comes with experience in the field. Hardly their
fault, but they should be aware of their own limitations.
--
|Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Music does not have to be understood|
|Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada| It has to be listened to. |
|email: dbarker@camosun.bc.ca | |
|phone: +1 250 370 4452 | Hermann Scherchen. |
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