From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 146b77,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid146b77,public X-Google-Thread: f5d71,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gidf5d71,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com Subject: Re: Ada vs C++ vs Java Date: 1999/01/15 Message-ID: <77mb7o$7bb$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 432731965 References: <369C1F31.AE5AF7EF@concentric.net> <369e09ff.3246197@news.supernews.co.uk> <77l2nq$46r$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x3.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Fri Jan 15 03:04:31 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.vxworks,comp.lang.java X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-01-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <77l2nq$46r$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, jim.hyslop@leitch.com wrote: > An issue to consider is the human aspect of this - how > many developers are currently familiar with the language > of choice? One of the main reasons COBOL is still so > prevalent is that it is not always easy to retrain > programmers in a different language. Many of them do not > *want* to switch languages. Maybe *a* reason but certainly not the main reason or even one of the main reasons. The reason that COBOL is still widely used is that it is still one of the best choices for the kind of programs it is used for. The complete lack of efficient scaled decimal arithmetic for example makes C or C++ or Java much less appropriate. Yes, you can approximate such facilities with libraries, but you lose efficiency, and clarity (for example there is no way to graft high precision decimal literals into C). This is just one strong point of COBOL, there are many others. Most people expressing the above kind of opinion typically are not COBOL experts! Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies (who is in the pretty unusual position of being both a COBOL expert and an Ada expert, having written compilers for both of these languages :-) -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own