Path: ...!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Article on new mainframe use
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 02:05:27 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <v9mc57$15mm9$2@dont-email.me>
References: <v9iqko$h7vd$1@dont-email.me>
	<bb873f7f6a14f222f73abacd698e60eb@www.novabbs.org>
	<3f8sbj9chugcr6arbpck2t7nb0g87ff6ik@4ax.com>
	<f7fe11f84f9342f0a7e27d4a729aadad@www.novabbs.org>
	<li71t8Fs9jnU1@mid.individual.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 04:05:28 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="fe72d36c65c5a55eac1ba2ec475c4532";
	logging-data="1235657"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+p3+9rStnY0PBvyaM7EuUX"
User-Agent: Pan/0.159 (Vovchansk; )
Cancel-Lock: sha1:tcibIc1cU6ZfX6PvPvZudoM3KkQ=
Bytes: 2313

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 22:06:16 +0300, Niklas Holsti wrote:

> Dewar used to say that COBOL is the "Rodney Dangerfield of programming
> languages", which just "don't get no respect".

Except people laughed *with* Rodney Dangerfield, whereas they laugh *at* 
COBOL. For Dangerfield, it was just an act, after all: you don’t think his 
real life was like that, do you?

COBOL was designed specifically for “business” computing, back when there 
was a clearly demarcation of what this meant: no need for complex 
mathematical formulae, no need for string/text manipulation, no need for 
interactive terminals.

One major crack in this wall came with the introduction of relational 
DBMSes, particularly ones using SQL as their interface language: suddenly, 
the use of such databases became very much a core “business” need.

The best way to interface to such a DBMS was to be able to generate SQL 
strings on the fly; but this required some facility with manipulation of 
dynamic, variable-length strings, which COBOL completely lacked. And so 
special extensions were tacked on, just to cope with the generation of SQL 
queries and templates.