Re: C is 'better' than Ada because...

[Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu>]

On Mon, 22 Jul 1996, Kevin D. Quitt wrote:

> A friend of mine is working on Object-oriented COBOL.  The truly terrifying
> thing is that it's not a joke.

  I wonder why this is so terrifying.  There is more COBOL in place
  throughout the business data processing community than any other
  language.  Though certain aspects of COBOL, such as its early
  dependency on global data (the Data Division) increased the difficulty
  of maintenance, and the rules of the "go to" could, and did, lead to
  pathological control structures, modern COBOL is evolving to take
  advantage of what we have learned over the past decade or so, while
  preserving what was good about the original language design.

  One of the most absurd things that MIS directors have done in the
  past several years is try to convert their financial systems to C++.
  It is far safer, and far more productive, to transition those early
  COBOL applications to OOCOBOL than to move to something as inherently
  unreliable as the C family of languages, including C++.

  Of course, the ideal solution would be for these MIS managers to
  effect that transition with Ada, but such perspicacity is probably
  too much too expect.  So OOCOBOL is at least a better alternative
  than C++.


  Richard Riehle