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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Another measure of Ada's rejection by corporate America
Date: 24 Feb 1995 23:25:07 -0500
Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Message-ID: <3imbf3$4hs@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <950222135950.2181cf52@ECC7.ATENG.AZ.HONEYWELL.COM>
 <3iigbo$o3p@rational.rational.com>
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Date: 1995-02-24T23:25:07-05:00
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David Moore says

"Classic COBOL has no block structure, no types (you can fake it on
some compilers with "COPY"). One procedure per compilation unit (there is
a "perform" which allows you to out-of-order execute and return within a
compilation unit but you cannot pass parameters and there are no local
variables) . No effective looping constructs, so you have to use go-tos
(or performs) everywhere."

Now really! We Ada folks should be particularly careful not to commit the
crime of ignorant bashing of languages we know nothing about.

Of course COBOL has block structure (nested programs)
There are nested procedures
Of course you can pass parameters (even COBOL 74 had this feature)
Of course there are perfectly reasonable looping structures
COBOL programmers are as allergic to gotos as Ada programmers

Let's please get our facts straight if we are going to criticize other
languages.