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From: Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: COBOL, Article on new mainframe use
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:32:25 +0200
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Michael S wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:40:00 +0200
> Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> wrote:
>=20
>> MitchAlsup1 wrote:
>>> On Sun, 18 Aug 2024 18:21:00 +0000, John Dallman wrote:
>>>   =20
>>>>  =C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=
=A0=C2=A0 I had a basic COBOL course at college in 1980-81, and
>>>> became quite clear that this wasn't what I wanted to do.
>>>>
>>>> John
>>>
>>> So, John is not a COBOholic !!
>>
>> Also not a COBOL fan, mostly due to the verbosity.
>>
>> I once ported a COBOL-specific algorithm to Pascal, which meant that
>> I had to reimplement code for all the 80-col punch card formatted IO
>> as well as sorting according to quite special rules.
>>
>> The original was 25 pages, my replacement ~5, at least half of which
>> was the COBOL specific function replacements, so the mainline code
>> became an order of magnitude smaller.
>>
>> Terje
>>
>=20
> What would be the size if you were porting it from COBOL to COBOL ?
>=20
Huh?

Are you asking about optimizing the COBOL to be much less verbose?

I have absolutely no idea where I would even have started such a task, I =

just looked at the actual source code, while already knowing _what_ it=20
was doing, and then figured out how to reimplement it in a different=20
language.

It is quite possible that the original COBOL was non-optimal, but I=20
still have no way to determine that.

Terje

--=20
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"