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From: Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: COBOL Interesting ? (and off-topic?) (Was Latin, etc.)
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 06:17:13 GMT
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In article <oe3f6.5161$Zp3.425471@e3500-chi1.usenetserver.com>,
  "Peter Richtmyer" <pmr@efortress.com> wrote:
> Seriosuly, I find what you said very interesting. I would
> like to know what the other "several languages" were in your
> study.

For the comparison, we used C, Pascal, and COBOL. One of the
things that helps COBOL is the VERY light syntax of internal
procedures.

> And more about "...the things that make COBOL an interesting
> language" to you.

Interesting features of COBOL, a brief non-comprehensive list

  1. The fact that all binding to subroutines is dynamic at
     runtime instead of static at link time. It is routine
     for COBOL programmers to change individual subroutines
     in running programs, and to introduce new ones. This
     can be done these days with DLL's etc, but it is part
     of the COBOL language, and always has been.

  2. The light syntax for top down refinement (PERFORM). As
     a result COBOL programmers, in contrast to Ada programmers
     do not like to nest constructs heavily, instead they
     refine with names.

          if Balance is Negative
             perform Send-Bill
          else
             perform Record-Credit
          end if.

       Send-Bill.
          ...

       Record-Credit.
          ...

     The syntactic overhead for defining these procedures is
     what you see, the name and a single period, period.

  3. The fully portable arithmetic model, allowing high
     precision decimal scaled arithmetic (duplicated in
     Ada in annex G, along with the PICTURE mechanism,
     which is very powerful and easy to use).

  4. Interesting high level verbs like SORT, INSPECT etc.

Well I could add more, but that's enough for now :-)




 Perhaps if your reply about COBOL also referred to Ada then
> we could keep "on-topic" and avoid what someone in the parent
> thread called the "Usenet-police-callers".  :-)
>
> In a past life I was a COBOL programmer.  I have more
recently taught
> (in-house) and programmed Ada, C and C++, and I always
defended
> COBOL (and RPG !) for their place in software development.
> Especially when COBOL is being maligned by some
"wet-behind-the-ears"
> over-paid and under-trained so-called engineer that does not
even know
> what "COBOL" stands for, no less how or when to use it.
>
> I also worked for while as a C++ programmer in a place where
there
> was open "class warfare" between the COBOL programmers and
the
> C++ programmers. On the whole, the COBOL programmers were
> the "better class of people" at that job. (He said
"Object-ively"   :-)
>
> Best regards,
> Peter
>
>


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