From: jw@mck-csc.UUCP (Jeffrey Weiss)
Subject: Re: What's really wrong with COBOL?
Date: 22 Mar 90 20:34:16 GMT [thread overview]
Message-ID: <423@mck-csc.UUCP> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 8458@hubcap.clemson.edu
In article <8458@hubcap.clemson.edu>,
billwolf exercises the keyboard and comes up with:
>From article <420@mck-csc.UUCP>, by jw@mck-csc.UUCP (Jeffrey Weiss):
>>
>> ...What are the real SUBSTANTIVE problems with COBOL?
>
> From a business perspective, the real substantive problem with COBOL
> is that typically 80% of effort is spent trying to maintain code which
> fundamentally is unmaintainable. The reason for this is that COBOL has
> found itself unable to evolve quickly enough to keep up with the last
> 20-30 years' worth of evolution in programming language technology.
>
[ ...history of COBOL and Software Engineering 101 deleted...]
> Now let me just briefly sketch out why COBOL is considered to be no
> longer adequate.
[ ...brief 80-line description of Ada features deleted...]
Those lines indicated two features (apparantly well supported by Ada) that
might be linked to maintainability. Those are:
- Module dependency tracking to aid in identifying "ripple-effects"
when implementing a change.
- Ability to build callable libraries of generic functionality, thus
supporting layered, modular programming.
I agree, these are important. (Someone else has mentioned local variables not
existing in COBOL, a feature which fits nicely in the above list.) Now, are
there really no ways to implement the above features in a COBOL environment?
Are function calls and libraries not possible for some reason? And could
tools such as SCCS or "make" provide the first point?
...mit-eddie!mck-csc!jw
Jeffrey Weiss
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1990-03-22 20:34 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <420@mck-csc.UUCP>
1990-03-22 2:18 ` What's really wrong with COBOL? William Thomas Wolfe, 2847
1990-03-22 20:34 ` Jeffrey Weiss [this message]
1990-03-23 6:27 ` William Thomas Wolfe, 2847
1990-03-24 15:43 ` jim frost
1990-03-24 21:38 ` William Thomas Wolfe, 2847
1990-03-25 22:19 ` jim frost
1990-03-28 6:21 ` a.lawrence
1990-03-29 13:52 ` Mike Feldman
1990-03-25 3:41 ` Steve Bridges
1990-03-23 11:07 ` Mike Harrison
1990-03-23 16:43 ` William Thomas Wolfe, 2847
1990-03-29 18:31 ` Andy DeFaria
1990-03-29 0:52 ext_iai
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1990-06-02 2:39 jay
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox