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, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,30df5a909ff1af4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Answering an Ada/COBOL Question Date: 1999/11/14 Message-ID: <80mc1j$6fo$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 548422041 References: <80hr16$5q2$1@nntp5.atl.mindspring.net> <80leu1$k3l$1@nnrp1.deja.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x21.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Nov 14 13:04:52 1999 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-11-14T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , Brian Rogoff wrote: > I also found the ML version of the case syntactically much > nicer. Also, pattern matching works on more than just > sequences of booleans. Note that I am not commenting at all on > the suitableness of FPs for > fiscal programming, just on the claim of "most elegant case > design" for COBOL. These are not simply Booleans in COBOL, they are conditions, which are rather different in COBOL than other languages. Make sure you really know the COBOL facility well (don't just rely on Richard's quick example) before deciding that the ML syntax is better for dealing with decision tables. Knowing and having used both languages, I definitely agree with Richard here and disagree with Brian. Yes the ML facility is general and powerful, No, it is not nearly as syntactically friendly and convenient as COBOL. A little interesting history here. When the Steelman requirements were finalized, one of the first steps was to do a careful comparison against existing languages. One of the languages was COBOL, and in fact COBOL came very close to satisfying many of the requirements, closer in many regards than say C or Pascal. I believe [though I may be remembering wrong here] that Jean Sammet was involved in this review. But the general feeling was that COBOL was not a serious contender as a language base for non-technical reasons (too many competent programming language experts are sure COBOL is junk and the fact that they have never looked at it does not deter them from this strongly held opinion). A little anecdote there. In academic programming language circles, it is almost required that people a) not know COBOL b) know that it is junk I advised a PhD student in the early 70's (Carma McClure, who is now married to James Martin) whose thesis topic was the design of structured approaches for COBOL programming, and more interestingly, a theoretical and experimental analysis of the effect of using a structured approach. She attended one of the Codasyl conferences at the time, the only academic person attending, and everyone kept asking "what are you doing here? no one from academia ever comes here!" Robert Dewar Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.