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 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 10d15b,d730ea9d54f7e063,start X-Google-Attributes: gid10d15b,public From: Richard Riehle Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because... Date: 1996/07/26 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 170326333 references: <31e02c32.342948604@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov> <4s4adc$l4a@ecuador.it.earthlink.net> <31EA0B65.3EF8@wgs.estec.esa.nl> <31EF7E48.5ABE@lmtas.lmco.com> <4ss8ru$3d4@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <31F28DBD.2A1D@harris.com> <31f3c52e.238719470@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov> content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII organization: National University, San Diego mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.cobol Date: 1996-07-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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