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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Subject: Re: Confusing language,
 was Re: Help help.. please.i am totaly new in ada programing
Date: 1999/11/11
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In article <wcc90462gqw.fsf@world.std.com>,
  Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote:
> Still, you (and Robert Dewar) now blame it on deficiencies of
> COBOL, which is quite fair.

No, we did not say it was a deficiency, to make such a claim
indicates a lack of knowledge of COBOL and how it is used.

A fundamental principle of COBOL, not present in other
languages, is that data is represented the same externally
and internally and is fully portable. This leads directly to
the character model of data. This is not a deficiency, just
a design decision with advantages and disadvantages. But once
you have data in this form, it definitely is the case that
4-digit years will take up more expensive core memory than
2-digit years.

Note as a contrast Ada's view of how to store dates, which is
completely hidden from the programmer. If you instantiate
sequential I/O for a type with Calendar.Time in it, you get
a tape full of highly implementation dependent data, something
that one avoids like the plague in the COBOL world.

The importance of data representation consistency in the COBOL
world is so high that no compiler is viable unless it is bit
compatible in data representation with standard IBM compilers,
including the ability to use EBCDIC to represent character data.
COBOL goes much further than Ada in worrying about *data*
compatibility. For example, the standard stream data in Ada is
nowhere near being portable!


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