More fun stuff about Cobol

More fun stuff about Cobol

[Dale Worley]

I believe that Grace Hopper has been promoted to Commodore, up from
Captain.

Cobol has been used for non-numerical work.  One early compiler (from
Hopper's shop) was written in Cobol in the early 50s.

Hopper, in order to prove that non-numerical programming was
*possible*, wrote a symbolic differentiation program.  One person this
was demonstrated to accused her of having a human feeding the results
into the program by a back door!  (This is likely to have been well
before compilers were written, but perhaps not...)

The original Cobol project was an attempt to put together a subset of
English that would allow non-programmers to program computers, thus
eliminating professional programmers.  Halfway through, it was
realized that this was impossible, so they changed the goal to produce
a programming language that could be read by a non-programmer.  Thus,
the project that started out to eliminate programmers produced the
language that 70-80% of all programmers work in!  (ref Perlis's
article in CACM blasting 'Star Wars')

Dale
-- 
Dale Worley    Cullinet Software      ARPA: cullvax!drw@eddie.mit.edu
UUCP: ...!seismo!harvard!mit-eddie!cullvax!drw
Apollo was the doorway to the stars - next time we should open it.
Disclaimer: Don't sue me, sue my company - they have more money.

Re: More fun stuff about Cobol

[D Gary Grady]

In article <1490@cullvax.UUCP> drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes:
>I believe that Grace Hopper has been promoted to Commodore, up from
>Captain.

Hopper was indeed promoted to Commodore.  I believe the Navy recently
got rid of the rank of Commodore again, returning to the strange
practice of several years ago that lumps O-7s (= Brig Gen in the other
services) and O-8s (= Major Gen) together as Rear Admirals, lower and
upper half.  (This odd terminology, especially in a service like the
Navy, leads to some obvious jokes.)

Anyway, I think Hopper retired after the wholesale conversion of
Commodores to Rear Admirals, so she retired a Rear Admiral.

-- 
D Gary Grady
(919) 286-4296
USENET:  {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary
BITNET:  dgary@ecsvax.bitnet

Re: More fun stuff about Cobol

[richard marks]

In article <1490@cullvax.UUCP> drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes:
>Cobol has been used for non-numerical work.  One early compiler (from
>Hopper's shop) was written in Cobol in the early 50s.

I once did a compiler (in the 80's) in Cobol.  We wanted it to be 100%
portable from our big 1100's to other manufacturer's boxes (blue ones).
In fact, Cobol and Fortran may be the most portable languages.

The compiler worked very well.  The data structures in Cobol are good.
I had to write one small assembler routine to get a block of memory and
return a pointer that Cobol used as an array index.  Implementation time,
execution time, etc were very good.  I would use Cobol again for such a
project and I've written several compilers in other languages.

Re: More fun stuff about Cobol

[William Linden]

In article <1490@cullvax.UUCP> drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes:
>I believe that Grace Hopper has been promoted to Commodore, up from
>Captain.
 
  Hopper retired last year, with the rank of Rear Admiral. N.Y. Times
coverage of the departure of the grandmother of Cobol consisted
of a photograph, and a caption which mentioned only that she was
"the last of the World War II WAVES on active service"!


-- 
    Will Linden
    {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri!dasys1!wlinden
    {sun,well,ihnp4,amdahl}!hoptoad!dasys1!wlinden
    {cucard,bc-cis}!dasys1!wlinden

More fun stuff about Cobol

[Dale Worley]

dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) writes:
> Hopper was indeed promoted to Commodore.  I believe the Navy recently
> got rid of the rank of Commodore again, returning to the strange
> practice of several years ago that lumps O-7s (= Brig Gen in the other
> services) and O-8s (= Major Gen) together as Rear Admirals, lower and
> upper half.

Someone explained to me that for a while the Navy didn't have O-7s at
all, which caused problems because the big jump from O-6 to O-8 was hard
to make.  So they re-instituted Commodores, but that sounded wimpyer
than Brig. Gen.  They finally make O-7s a form of Admiral, so the set
of ranks labelled Admiral would be the same as the set labelled
General.

Dale
-- 
Dale Worley    Cullinet Software      ARPA: cullvax!drw@eddie.mit.edu
UUCP: ...!seismo!harvard!mit-eddie!cullvax!drw
Apollo was the doorway to the stars - next time we should open it.
Disclaimer: Don't sue me, sue my company - they have more money.

Re: More fun stuff about Cobol

[jholbach]

in article <1502@cullvax.UUCP>, drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) says:
> Xref: wright comp.lang.ada:443 comp.lang.c:3073 comp.lang.misc:513
> 
> dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) writes:
>> Hopper was indeed promoted to Commodore.  I believe the Navy recently
>> got rid of the rank of Commodore again, returning to the strange
>> practice of several years ago that lumps O-7s (= Brig Gen in the other
>> services) and O-8s (= Major Gen) together as Rear Admirals, lower and
>> upper half.
> 
> Someone explained to me that for a while the Navy didn't have O-7s at
> all, which caused problems because the big jump from O-6 to O-8 was hard
> to make.  So they re-instituted Commodores, but that sounded wimpyer
> than Brig. Gen.  They finally make O-7s a form of Admiral, so the set
> of ranks labelled Admiral would be the same as the set labelled
> General.
>
	The first explanation was correct -- we've always had O-7s
and O-8s (which are both "pay-grades" and not "ranks"), it's just that
the O-7s were Rear Admiral (lower half) and the O-8s Rear Admiral (upper
half). When this was changed several years ago, the Navy hierarchy
couldn't make up its collective mind between the title Commodore (which
has some tradition behind it) and another suggested title Commodore Admiral
(which has the magic phrase Admiral in it). Commodore finally won out, 
but was immediately unpopular with the next batch of newly selected
O-7s who (if the articles in the Navy Times were correct) felt that the 
world did not accept that they were *real* admirals since their titles
did not reflect that. Since this was nearly as momentous a question as
whether sailors should receive a decoration merely for having gone to sea
(we do *now*), the issue was finally resolved by going back to the way
it was before. 
	Speaking of naval tradition, we seem to have started a new 
tradition -- change something for the sake of change and then several
years later, reinvent the wheel by going back to the way it was before.
Ever wonder why sailors look like sailors again? Bell bottoms are back --
who the heck wants to enlist in an organization that wears coats and ties
on the way to the Persian Gulf?

	"It's not just a job -- it's an adventure!"

Jim Holbach