Re: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Richard Riehle wrote:

> The data structures were consistently global, thereby making the notion of
> localization of data impossible.   The fact that FORTRAN also failed to
> provide adequate scoping rules for conditional constructs does not make
> the same defect in COBOL any more acceptable.

But there was a major difference.  It was common in COBOL* in the 60's 
and 70's to write what we would now make a subroutine as a Cobol 
program, and use JCL to tie the various COBOL programs together to 
create an application.

Yes, I can agree that programming in JCL was painful, but that had 
little to do with COBOL, and everything to do with the memory sizes on 
then current machines.  You couldn't fit the whole program--or whole 
dataset--in memory, and you wouldn't run into thrashing, since most 
machines did no have virtual memory.  (Yes, I know that some 360s and 
all 370s had virtual memory support, but you had to run an OS that used it.)


*Capitilization intentional to distinguish between two versions of the 
language.

-- 

                                           Robert I. Eachus

The ideology he opposed throughout his political life insisted that 
history was moved by impersonal tides and unalterable fates. Ronald 
Reagan believed instead in the courage and triumph of free men and we 
believe it all the more because we saw that courage in him.  -- George 
W. Bush June 11, 2004