Re: Advise to Programmer Wannabee (was #299)

[munnari.oz.au!sol.deakin.OZ.AU!mimas.cc.deakin.OZ.AU!not-for-mail@uunet.u u.net (Tim Cook)]

BUSHMAN@MITECMAIL.CCSCNET.AF.MIL writes:

>In article <1992Oct1.105159.8145@brt.deakin.edu.au), someone (they didn't sign
>message)

That someone was quite probably one Doug Miller.

>Now we both know that Ada is not the best language to use for accounting
>programs.  COBOL would be much better for this.  But it too (at least the
>newer versions) are also big.  But he would at least be learning the
>language that he will find out in the field once he graduates from Purdue
>University.  From Scott's original message, it didn't really sound to me that
>he wanted to become a programmer.  I got the impression that he wanted to be
>an accountant that knew some programming also.

If this is really the case, he would be best off leaving general-
purpose programming languages alone and concentrating on Lotus 1-2-3.

>Don't get me wrong, you could write some very good accounting programs in
>Ada. Ada can do it. But is anybody out there actually doing this? I think
>not. They are using things like COBOL. Why? Because COBOL was designed for
>this purpose.  It does stand for COmmon Business Oriented Language, or did
>they change it?  I mean, it was designed for things like accounting.

Yes, you could say COBOL was designed for things like accounting.
Unfortunately, it was not designed for things like programming.

>I also agree that COBOL is an old language and that it uses some old ideas.
>But have you looked at the latest versions?  They have released (or
>getting ready to release) things like Object Oriented COBOL, CASE Tools for
>COBOL, etc. COBOL is evolving. It is not the old show it used to be in the
>70's.

This is probably where many would shoot holes in my argument, as I
have not seen any new COBOL since COBOL 85, which IMHO made a pathetic
attempt to update COBOL to about late-70's standard.  Given that any
new COBOL would probably be based largely on old COBOL, any new COBOL
is likely to remain an abomination.  You know what the success of
COBOL-generating CASE applications says to me?  It says "we have to
use COBOL, but please, please don't force us to write COBOL code".  I
wonder why that has happened...

>Let's put things back into perspective, quit this bickering, and go on with
>our business.  We are all professionals here.  Ada is a good language, some
>would even say that is a great language, but it is not the language to end
>all languages.  It too has some "quarks".  All languages do.  There are
>applications out there that are better solved by languages other than Ada.

I would strongly argue, however, that accounting is not necessarily
one of them; certainly not if you restrict "languages other than Ada"
to COBOL (and similar efforts).

Is anyone else out there tired of COBOL dogma?