home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!ames!bionet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!sobeco!alawrenc
- From: alawrenc@sobeco.com (a.lawrence)
- Newsgroups: alt.cobol
- Subject: Re: The inevitable question
- Message-ID: <1992Jul29.012052.2193@sobeco.com>
- Date: 29 Jul 92 01:20:52 GMT
- References: <1992Jul25.060022.9237@uwm.edu> <1992Jul25.154243.19607@cs.unca.edu> <EMERY.92Jul27111003@Dr_No.mitre.org> <Bs2r39.Hot@snuffy.wa.atk.com>
- Distribution: usa
- Organization: Sobeco Ernst & Young
- Lines: 128
-
- WAIT A MINUTE! Doesn't everyone involved in this discussion realize that
- they are comparing apples and oranges. Just for the record. I have been
- programming professionally in assembler and machine languages since 1967,
- COBOL since 1970, RPG-II, III & 400 since 1976, BASIC since 1981, C and PASCAL
- since 1984, not to mention the dozen or so other languages I used for various
- project.
-
- COBOL is going to survive and continue to be used for business application
- simple because of its the best language for that environment. After all
- it is the COmon Business Oriented Language. It is also the most portable of
- all languages I have ever encountered. Probably because, thanks to Grace
- Hopper, is was the first to be standardized.
-
- For writing systems software for a cross platform environment, C is the best
- I have met to date. I expect it to expand the almost monopoly is now has
- even more in the future.
-
- For simple multilevel reports and will manipulation RPG (or some IV GL) will
- win every time.
-
- etc. etc. etc.
-
- My choice of a language for any development project depends first on what
- the system is (business, graphics, database, etc) and secondly what is
- supported on the platform or platforms the application is supposed to
- run on.
-
- In <Bs2r39.Hot@snuffy.wa.atk.com> mluders@snuffy.wa.atk.com (Matthew_Luders) writes:
-
- >emery@Dr_No.mitre.org (David Emery) writes:
-
- >>The hallmark of COBOL systems is maintenance.
-
- Sorry, the hallmark of all *production* systems is maintenance. To the
- order of 80% maintenance to 20% new development. Whether the application
- is an operating system, accounts payable, a windowing environment,
- general ledger or a word processor. The language the system is written
- only impacts the time necessary to develop the application. Maintability
- is impacted by the quality of the documentation and how well the original
- design was structured and the programs written. Again, irregardless of
- language.
-
- >... I find that a well-written C program is
- >easier to maintain than a poorly-written COBOL program.
-
- Any well written program is easier to maintain that a poor written program.
- Again, the particular languages involved have very little to do with it.
- Seems kinda obvious to me.
-
- >Why are the programs in such bad shape? Three possible reasons spring to
- >mind:
-
- >(1) Many of them were written 15-20 years, before the importance or principles
- > of stuctured coding and design were well known and accepted.
-
- Structured programming has been with us 1972. Before that we used a
- technique called modular programming which was the same think defined
- less formally. Before that smart programmers designed and wrote their
- code that way because it worked and was maintainable.
-
- >(2) The people that wrote these programs had backgrounds in accounting or
- > business management, not computer science or electrical engineering.
- > Actually, this seems to be true even today.
-
- The computer "scientists" and engineers I have met who actually program
- are the some worst *production* programmers I have ever met. So are
- the accountants and managers. Mostly because these people work alone
- on relatively small projects. Give me professional programmers, who
- know about standards, walkthoughts, documentation and coding efficienty.
- In reality bad code is the result of bad system management. The
- project manager is the one who decides whether or not to adher to
- programming standards, not the programmer. In the past I've sent
- more than one program back for a major rewrite because the programmer
- was sloppy and I've fired programmers who thought standards were for
- others. Again the language involved has no importance.
-
- > In fact, this is probably why
- > COBOL is under the alt heading instead of comp.lang with the other
- > languages. I wonder how many COBOL programmers even know of the existence
- > of the Internet?
-
- Very, very few. Most programmers, not just COBOL, go to work in the
- morning, work at their assigned tasks throughout the day, and go home
- at the end of regular business hours. alt.cobol vs comp.lang.cobol is
- not a function of the attitudes or COBOL programmers but rather who
- the subscribers to Internet are.
-
- >(3) COBOL programmers (like programmers everywhere) are often under pressure
- > to make changes to code quickly. This can lead to "quick-and dirty"
- > patches that are not well-integrated with the basic design of the program.
- > Over time, this leads to code that is a convoluted mess of patches on top
- > of patches on top of patches, ad nauseum.
-
- Again, this applies to any programming environment. Its a management
- problem, not a language or programmer problem.
-
- >There is a bright side. For all the criticism that COBOL gets from software
- >engineers, it is possible to write structured, readable, maintainable code with
- >it.
-
- It is possible to write structured, readable maintainable code in any language,
- possible exception APL.
-
- >Its record and field handling capabilities make it well-suited for
- >creating reports, which is probably what it's used for the most. But the fact
- >that a program is written in COBOL certainly does *not* guarantee (or even
- >improve the chances) that it's maintainable. In fact, you could argue that
- >there are elements of COBOL that tend to make programs written in it *less*
- >maintainable (e.g. the lack of local variables). Some of these problems were
- >addressed with the release of COBOL-85 (e.g. the addition of the end-if and
- >evaluate statements), but I don't know how widely COBOL-85 is being used yet.
-
- Actually most COBOL code is involved in processing files. One of COBOL's
- strong points is that sequential, random and indexed file access methods
- are built into the language standard. Another advantage is decimal
- precision. PIC S99999V99 COMP is just that in COBOL, guantanteed.
- Just as COMP is guaranteed to be the most efficient arithmetic format
- on the platform, and I know of one computer where that is *not*
- binary.
-
- >I'd be curious to hear other people's opinions on these topics.
-
- So you have.
- --
- On a clear disk you can seek forever.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Andrew Lawrence, Informaticien Conseil | alawrenc@sobeco.com
- 3605 St-Urbain, #1605 | uunet!sobeco!alawrenc
-