Re: COBOL origin

[wayned@cpcug.org (Wayne Dernoncourt)]

In article <1994Nov30.221351.2917@nosc.mil>,
mshapiro@nosc.mil (Michael D Shapiro) wrote:
 > In article <1994Nov29.182445.6678@eos.arc.nasa.gov>,
 > IanMaclure <maclure@eos.arc.nasa.gov> wrote:
 > >mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
 > >
 > >>In article <EACHUS.94Nov28142716@spectre.mitre.org>,
 > >>Robert I. Eachus <eachus@spectre.mitre.org> wrote:
 
 > >I'm trying to remember what Admiral Grace Hopper said about COBOL but all
 > >I can remember is that she felt a certain amount of proprietary pride in it.
 > >She did specifically mention that she had some of the ratings ( thats enlisted
 > >types ) in her organization produce a compiler at one point.
 > >COBOL may have originated with the Navy perhaps with her office?
 > >And yes COBOL cannot be said to have evolved like Ada, of course if the
 > >space program had "evolved" like Ada there'd still be flame wars over whether
 > >or not to put windows in the capsules and an actual launch would be years
 > >away.

 > The story, as I recall, is that the computer makers, each of
 > which had a commercial programming language, could not get
 > together for fear of antitrust suits.  To get around the hurdle
<snip>
 > calling the conference and coordinating the work went to the
 > group with Grace Hopper.  Later she managed the team that
 > developed the COBOL validation process, later transfered to
 > NIST.

Yeah but I think you're missing the question.  What did she say about
COBOL.  I had the honor of hearing her talk a couple of times and she said
that no language should be around forever.  She also threatened everyone
that if we ever said "But that's the way we've always done it", that whe
would materialize beside us and hit us.  I think she was proud of the work
that she had done with COBOL, but she was saddened that people couldn't
let go of an old language and embrace a replacement language (COBOL 74 &
COBOL 85 bear little resemblance to the original).

The Navy team developed a test suite to verify the compliance of a vendors
implementation, after the testing function was transferred to NIST, NIST
replaced the lines that said "test programs developed by the US Navy", with
ones that said "test programs developed by NIST" (or something like that,
may not have been developed), she raised hell and it was changed back to
US Navy.

The last time I heard her talk was either at a trade show held in
Washington, DC trying to sell stuff to the feds, or at a CASE workshop put
on by a Navy command (NAVSEA - I think) - in either case, she had retired
and was working for DEC [rumor was that Ken Olsen wanted someone working
at DEC that was older than he was].  She wanted to see a interface
standard develop that would let CASE tools work together.  Her analogy was
screwdrivers and screws.  There were different types of screws from a lot
of different vendors, but most times you could find a screwdriver from a
different set of vendors that would make it work.

Enough reminiscing.

-- 
Take care      |   This clown speaks for himself, his job doesn't
Wayne D.       |   pay for this, etc. (directly anyway)