COBOL vs "C" vs ADA

[neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP]

In article <1146@watmum.waterloo.edu>, smvorkoetter@watmum.waterloo.edu 
(Stefan M. Vorkoetter) writes:
> In article <253@etn-rad.UUCP> jru@etn-rad.UUCP (0000-John Unekis) writes:
> >                                                           As long as
> >	  computers remain basically Von Neuman processors, no language is
> >	  going to offer any advantages in the real world to a language
> >	  like COBOL. 
> 
> Really?  COBOL is a big kludgy language.  Nothing written in COBOL runs
> very fast.  Do you think IBM's COBOL compiler is written in COBOL?  No way.

It certainly is big and kludgy.  I am sure IBM's COBOL compiler is not
written in COBOL, but interestingly the REALIA COBOL compiler for PCs
apparently IS written in COBOL.  That compiler has actually gotten very good
reviews and in an article in CACM a few months ago was shown to get
performance out of a (single-tasking) AT-class machine comparable to a
(normally-loaded) 370 class mainframe.  Not bad for COBOL, but *I* still
wouldn't want to spend the best years of my life programming in COBOL.

-- 
Paul Neubauer 	UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!neubauer