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From: Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Rewriting SSA. Is This A Chance For GNU/Linux?
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2025 14:40:27 -0000 (UTC)
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It should be noted that GnuCOBOL actually translates COBOL to C, and then 
compiles the C code with GnuC.  In *theory* one could just run the whole code 
base through GnuCOBOL and create a C code base, but good luck making much 
sense of the generated C code...

At Tue, 1 Apr 2025 10:16:55 -0400 -hh <recscuba_google@huntzinger.com> wrote:

> 
> On 3/31/25 08:11, chrisv wrote:
> > c186282 wrote:
> > 
> >>    Oh, I agree ... trying to "rapidly rebuild" the "Just Works"
> >>    code-base is VERY risky. As said, most of those old COBOL
> >>    apps on those old computers were basically PERFECT - and
> >>    the fallout from being IMperfect is SEVERE - both politically
> >>    and per-individual affected. Extreme caution is advised.
> > 
> > Sorry for my below naive/stupid questions...
> > 
> > How hard could SS be?  
> 
> In a word, "very".
> 
> > Are the rules so complex?  
> 
> In snapshot form, not too terribly bad.  Problem is that there's been 
> 50+ years worth of revisions, and the documentation of every change is 
> never 100.0000% perfect in every last detail.
> 
> As such, its become a "black box" that no one really knows what all it 
> is doing, so its a nightmare to try to document all the processes to try 
> to reproduce it.
> 
> This is why multiple Fortune 500 corporations has had projects over the 
> years to try to replace COBOL, but which have repeatedly failed.  For 
> example, one that I was aware of was looking to use Smalltalk; I never 
> paid attention enough to know if that was a good choice or not.
> 
> 
> > I know it's hundreds
> > of millions of people, but that doesn't seen a huge challenge for
> > modern systems.  I don't know why it would be any harder than any
> > "significant" piece of software, like spreadsheet or database
> > software.
> 
> It is "big iron" mainframe stuff.  Think of a single data center having 
> literally *rows* of IBM 360's/370's.
> 
> Granted, there's been huge growth for web-based centers that are running 
> thousands of webservers/etc, but that's largely independent parallel 
> capacity, not a single database, so that drives solution approaches too.
> 
> > I'm also wondering how large the code base could be, if it was written
> > fifty years ago when a megabyte was a huge amount of memory.
> 
> Yup.  A system my wife worked on back in the 1990s for Y2K had literally 
> a couple of **Pentabytes** of data storage being managed by their COBOL 
> system.  I doubt it has grown by all that much .. my guess is that 
> they're probably still under ~50 Pentabytes today.
> 
> 
> -hh
>                                                                         
> 

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