Re: COBOL compiler
On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 00:25, Ron Johnson wrote:
> 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.
I particularly like the way it deletes the most significant figure(s) when
you get an overflow in a numeric field. Or so it did last time I had anything
to do with it.
Considering that it was developed within the US Navy who likely would not
want their expenditure totals accurately reported that feature may not have
been a design snafu, it might have been deliberate.
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