Re: COBOL compiler
On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 22:13, Deryk Barker wrote:
> Thus spake Ron Johnson (ron.l.johnson@cox.net):
>
> > On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 17:34, Paul M Foster wrote:
> > > On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 01:15:13AM -0500, Michael Heironimus wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 11:57:27PM -0400, Al Davis wrote:
> > > > > Learn the style, so when someone gives you a COBOL-style
> > > > > program in C++, you will understand it.
> > > >
> > > > Do not underestimate the value of this. You can take a COBOL programmer
> > > > and teach him C/C++/Java (or whatever popular language), and he'll pick
> > > > up the syntax just fine. And as soon as you tell him to write something
> > > > he'll write code that looks EXACTLY like COBOL in C/C++/Java syntax. It
> > > > will be unreadable, unmaintainable, and hopelessly inefficient, but
> > > > nobody will ever have time for the rewrite it desperately needs.
> > >
> > > I've heard about this before, but I don't think I've ever seen it.
> > > Someday I'd like to see some "COBOL-like" code written in C.
> >
> > Instead of lots of small functions and a minimum of global variables,
> > the classic code from a "bad COBOL programmer forced to write C"
> > would have large main(), very few other functions, and all global
> > variables.
>
> Which no doubt applied to the first few program I wrote in B (the
> first HLL I used after 6 years of COBOL and assembler), but reading
> other people's code is an excellent education. Just because somebody
> of necessity used COBOL first does not make them a bad person.
Never said it did! (Although I might have been a bit too generic.)
And you learned; the Bad COBOL Programmer I worked with never did.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr. ron.l.johnson@cox.net
Jefferson, LA USA
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer
arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Bertrand Meyer
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