| Bill Gunshannon 2008-01-16, 7:55 am |
| In article <ur6ro3pkiku1gqohuiu4ff5rffvetqsrop@4ax.com>,
Robert <no@e.mail> writes:
> On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:18:52 -0400, Clark F Morris <cfmpublic@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
> The version of Cobol in wide use has not changed in 22 years, since 1985. During that
> time, the number of general purpose computers worldwide went from 30 million to 1 billion.
>
> The 2002 Cobol Standard has been ignored, for the most part, because the 'Cobol community'
> does not want change.
Of course, it might also be that th4e changtes bring nothing that was
needed to get the job done. Why re-write an application because some
ivory-tower academic things you should do things differently when the
application has been doing its job for over two decades?
> The purpose of shop standards is to keep change out. It worked.
Pretty pessimistic view. The purpose of shop standards is to keep people
from using bad coding practices as a way to promote job security. Just
like the language, a local standard can be changed. the difference usually
is that when trying to change a local standard someone is going to look
at the change with an eye towards cost of implementation and advantagr
provided. The same is never true of standard bodies who rather than
trying to help the industry just want to be the one driving the bus.
> Problem is, it also excluded Cobol from tremendous growth in the computer industry. The
> 'Cobol community' was left behind.
Considering how much COBOL is still out there, that's pretty funny. We
have a professor here who is always talking about how a certain local
company with millions of lines of COBOL is "going to re-write all of it
in JAVA". Everytime I mention this to a manager in the COBOL shop they
end out rolling on the floor laughing!!
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
|