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From: Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2024 10:54:41 -0700
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186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:
> On 9/27/24 4:38 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 9/27/24 13:43, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Cobol was also very portable.
>>>> 
>>>> As long as your destination compiler supports COMP-3.  :-)
>>> 
>>> Or your source computer didn't have COMP-3, or if you didn't use it.
>> 
>> I was once called in to optimize a CPU-bound COBOL program.
>> The genius who wrote it declared all subscripts as COMP-3.
>> Changing them to COMP-4 knocked 30% off the execution time.
> 
>   Did COBOL even HAVE real "types" ???
> 
>   It was not really a "sophisticated" language.
>   It was MEANT mostly for biz/commercial apps,
>   esp financial and scheduling. It was GOOD at
>   that - except for being TOO ugly/confusing in
>   the chase to be "simple/self-documenting".
> 
>   I don't hate COBOL - it HAD/HAS its place.
>   However the real-world implementation could
>   never live-up to "The Vision".
> 
>   COBOL could/can be "improved" - made more
>   efficient. But NOBODY is gonna DO that
>   these days. As such COBOL kinda becomes
>   like 'Latin' - an unchanging 'dead' lang.
>   This MAY be a good thing.
> 
> 

I think they’ve added a lot to COBOL over the years - real subroutines with
parameters instead pf just PERFORM.

-- 
Pete