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From: munck@Mill-Creek-Systems.com (Bob Munck)
Subject: Re: Ada vs C++ vs Java
Date: 1999/01/16
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Date: 1999-01-16T19:26:27+00:00
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On Fri, 15 Jan 1999 16:07:31 GMT, robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote:

>.... I cannot imagine anything more
>horrible than importing Pascal style into COBOL. 

I can; I've seen it.

A couple of decades ago I did the analysis and design of a
budget and funds-tracking system for a government agency.
They gave the implementation contract to one of their
captive contractors, a group that mostly did highly
sophisticated supercomputer programming in FORTRAN II.
They proceeded to code the accounting system in a couple
of hundred thousand lines of numerical-analysis style
FORTRAN II.  You cannot imagine what it looked like.

The ultimate flaw was the fact that the agency's budget was
in the billion dollar range.  The main data type, an amount
of money (in pennies) could therefore exceed the capacity
of the largest integer that the machine supported.  To handle
this, they quite naturally used floating point. (!!)

After a certain amount of excitement, we (SofTech) were given
back the project, and proceeded to write the system in COBOL.
Last I heard it was still in use, though I hope they've made it
Y2K compliant by now.

Bob Munck
Mill Creek Systems LC