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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 12:00:23 +0000
Organization: A little, after lunch
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On 27/02/2025 09:30, c186282 wrote:
> On 2/27/25 2:43 AM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2025-02-26, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2/25/25 2:33 PM, vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I went from DEC20 FORTRAN to pdp11 Basic (it had matrix math) to 
>>>>> DEC SAIL
>>>>> (Algol) to Pascal to C to Python
>>>>
>>>>    Sounds familiar ... though 'C' became available on
>>>>    the PDP-11s (was writ on them). Still pref Pascal
>>>>    over Python where possible.
>>>>
>>>>> Assembler and COBOL were needed but avoided
>>>>
>>>>    Better ASM than COBOL  :-)
>>>
>>> Depends on what you want to do. Assembler is a lot more fun,
>>> but I wouldn’t want to write a payroll system in it.
>>
>> Wrote 'em, maintained 'em.  They're hell in any language.
>>
>> Having said that, I really enjoyed working in assembly language,
>> for the privilege of not having some snooty compiler slap your
>> wrist and say you needed a page of code to do something you could
>> do in a few lines of assembly code.
>>
>>>>    ASM can give you kind of a buzz, makes you one
>>>>    with the machine.
>>>>
>>>>    Alas if I'd learned more COBOL then I could have
>>>>    had a lucrative retirement income supp maintaining
>>>>    all those old biz/ops code. Still LOTS of it in
>>>>    use and it's too expensive now to replace. If it
>>>>    works you hang on to it with a death grip.
>>>
>>> It’s not just COBOL any more, it’s all COBOL/CICS/DB2. Same with PL/I.
>>
>> My COBOL days didn't involve any database stuff.  Mind you, I've
>> managed to avoid any sort of DBMS for my entire career.  However,
>> I did do enough work with Univac's equivalent of CICS (in both
>> COBOL and assembly language) to be glad to be done with it.
> 
>    We ADMIT - COBOL SUCKED.
> 
>    The "All purpose business language" was just
>    HORRIBLE to work with.
> 

That is probably because you don't have the patience to stick to the rules.
What mattered in COBOL applications was no bugs. None. Not one.
The process of analysing a business and creating business oriented 
applications that were 100% reliable lead to system analysts working out 
how to do it and passing the specification down to programmers and 
testing every single module.

Worth it for banks and big companies.

>    I've done some COBOL - but under 100 lines.
>    Did NOT love it.
> 
I looked into it quiet hard at one point. I was very impressed. It was 
clearly a language that a total numpty could program in and get right.

When I went into databases etc I found some of the methodology to be 
useful as well.

Also it was clearly designed for machines with limited memory with 
modules not being held in RAM if not in use.

>    On the flip, a HUGE volume of biz/gov stuff
>    that STILL WORKS was writ in COBOL during
>    the 60s. It was good, it worked, it STILL
>    works. Those 60s nerds were GOOD.
> 
I think it was less that the nerds were good than that they followed 
strict guidelines of how to code.
At some level everything was flowcharted and every single bit of data 
memory had a name and its function went into the data dictionary.

In short it was fully documented before it was written, in detail, and 
then passed over to hack 'progs' to turn into COBOL

And TESTED against the detail specifications

This is big corporation stuff .

>    Oh, for Linux, some COBOL development
>    environments - including 'IDE' - are to
>    be had. It's NOT a dead language - just
>    'less popular' than it used to be.
> 
IIRC Microfocus COBOL still makes a profit.


>    If you ARE a COBOL expert - there's LOTS
>    of money to be made. Replacing that COBOL
>    is now TOO EXPENSIVE ... so maint has become
>    a Big Thing.

IIRC the main money was in RPG?
i.e. once the big cobol program was actually written and you had the 
data, you needed tools like RPG to produce decent reports and they 
always wanted more


-- 
Microsoft : the best reason to go to Linux that ever existed.