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From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Modernizing Ada
Message-ID: <2431@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 15 Oct 89 09:54:12 GMT
References: <8910132028.AA07013@helios.enea.se> <6780@hubcap.clemson.edu>
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In article <6780@hubcap.clemson.edu>, billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) writes:
>     COBOL started out (Ichbiah, CACM, Oct. 84) with "exactly the same" 
>     motives that Ada started with!!  Because of COBOL's demonstrated 
>     inability to change with the times, the DoD decided to just scrap 
>     COBOL completely and start over. 

COBOL has changed *dramatically* with time.  Successive COBOL standards
have not merely added new things (like nested programs, terminators on
compound statements, new statements) but have also discarded old things
(like the ALTER statement).  The main complaint that I have heard from
COBOL users is that new standards change too much too fast; adapting to
a new standard is not just a matter of recompling.  In fact there is no
shortage of companies that make a living converting other people's old
COBOL programs to new standards.

COBOL is guilty of a lot of things, but not of standing still.