From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 2002:a6b:9c8f:: with SMTP id f137-v6mr9843984ioe.27.1526829508031; Sun, 20 May 2018 08:18:28 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:aca:ec90:: with SMTP id k138-v6mr1101430oih.2.1526829507853; Sun, 20 May 2018 08:18:27 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.uzoreto.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!feeder.usenetexpress.com!feeder-in1.iad1.usenetexpress.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!u74-v6no3644877itb.0!news-out.google.com!b185-v6ni3500itb.0!nntp.google.com!v8-v6no3685732itc.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Sun, 20 May 2018 08:18:27 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=2607:f2c0:9593:c00:39c8:53e8:7bff:28c3; posting-account=cUi90woAAADTaOISowbbHM8GUD0-opJO NNTP-Posting-Host: 2607:f2c0:9593:c00:39c8:53e8:7bff:28c3 References: <65d93062-f55d-435f-a099-3c8ee75f2705@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <12d36c64-22e3-460b-94c6-477752996451@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Is this Forum Moderated? From: patrick@spellingbeewinnars.org Injection-Date: Sun, 20 May 2018 15:18:28 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:52502 Date: 2018-05-20T08:18:27-07:00 List-Id: Hi Shark8 ! "I have had the idea, for a while, that banks & insurance companies & other= financial institutions could see a lot of improvement WRT modernization wi= th mixed Ada/COBOL programs; in particular doing the report-generation in C= OBOL and the main "business logic" in Ada (with heavy usage of types to ens= ure correctness) instead of the [seemingly] more popular "PORT IT TO JAVA" = that I've seen some people advocate. What are your thoughts? " I think whenever we bring up another language besides Ada we are going to g= et negative posts but I am putting on my helmet and body armor now..... It took me many years to build up the confidence to look at languages with = my own eyes and to ignore the hype. It brought me to Ada and to COBOL as we= ll. There is actually a great deal of overlap between two in terms of functiona= lity. IMHO Ada is best suited as the "main" with COBOL as library code. GnuCOBOL = is not thread safe and should be in it's own task. If you can manage with a= n ncurses interface, the screen section in COBOL is great. I would recommend to leave whatever business logic you can in COBOL and to = use Ada's strengths of programming in the large, exceptions and tasking. GnuCOBOL has a small runtime that is much easier to alter than GNAT's. I ha= ve made modifications to the screen section to allow for idle calls backs, = 256 colour support and mouse support. The GnuCOBOL list is very approachable and tightly moderated. You won't get= any RTFM like posts. It's a second home to me now. I have test code to interface the two and I would love to help you. I don't= use interfaces.cobol. COBOL already has lots of types ready for use with C= and they are compatible with Ada too. strings.fixed and the built-in strin= gs work great. GnuCOBOL just added report writer support this January and I= am pretty familiar with it too. COBOL is haunted with criticism from the past. I have seen COBOL 1968 and 1= 974 vintage code and it sucks large. The COBOL 85 revision made it an aweso= me language. I am not crazy about the 2002 revisions but just so you know, = you don't have to obey a rigid layout with the 2002 revision. You can pass = the -free flag to the compiler and whitespace becomes insensitive, you can = use uppercase or lowercase and identifers can be 30 characters long or even= longer if you wish. GnuCOBOL compiles to intermediate C and the generated code is easy to read = once you get the hang of it. The project uses pretty standard libraries lik= e GMP, libtool and ncurses. The compiler is Bison/Flex.The licensing arrang= ement is also a bit complicated like the GNAT situation but basically you c= an use the default settings which will link in libdb and force AGPL code or= you can use an older libdb version for GPL code or you can use an external= library called libvbism and you can have a LGPL runtime suitable for linki= ng to you preferred license. Where is Byron? I would like to check it out. Thanks-Pat