Subject:
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Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Tue, 13 Jul 1999 21:52:18 GMT
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Viewed:
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1041 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> Todd Lehman wrote:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> > > "What The--?! Why don't we use words we already know?"
> > > And thus the evil in Grace Hopper begat COBOL.
> >
> > Hey, don't be dissin' COBOL for that :-( It served a purpose in its
> > time (~40 years ago) and it's not COBOL's fault that it's still being
> > used.
>
> I have to admit, I'm something of an anti-COBOL bigot.
Well, hey, aren't we all -- and as well we should all be (IMHO) in 1999,
especially with all this Double-Byte COBOL, OO-COBOL, and COBOL-Java stuff
going on as perverse attempts to keep COBOL alive and milking the Y2K cash
cow.
But I thought you were talking about the original design decisions back in
1955. For all we know, maybe back then you couldn't even type "x := x + 1"
on a keyboard and that's why you say "ADD 1 TO X"...? The real reasons
I'm sure aren't that extreme, but there must've been reasonable reasons
at the time. (Hopper was no slack -- PhD in Mathematics from Yale; worked
with Aiken at Harvard on the Mark I-III machines, served in the U.S. Navy
for years and was eventually given presedential appointment to flag rank
as admiral.) I'd love to know more about COBOL's origins, but I'm afraid
I'd start barfing because of the fact that it's still used today. (Hmm,
note to self: maybe a 1960 history book on computers at a used bookstore
would be a good read. :-)
> That has obviously
> clouded my judgement, but I can't see what COBOL could do that FORTRAN
> wasn't already doing more cleanly and efficiently, on the same platforms.
Different camps, right? In a nutshell, FORTRAN was/is for math and physics
geeks, while COBOL was/is for suits. (Or: FORTRAN is for number crunching
and COBOL is for business record data manipulation.)
Also: FORTRAN (begun in 1954, first reference manual published in 1956,
and first production version released in 1957) was an IBM project. COBOL
(begun in 1955, released in 1959) was largely a US Navy project, and also
somewhat an effort to demonstrate that computers didn't have to be used
only for number-crunching. Very different camps, very different mindsets,
and can you imagine the Navy licensing a language from IBM when they could
make their own? :-)
--Todd
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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| (...) Oy vey, der camps. I alvays vorget der camps. Und der suits und der schlide-rules and der schtuff. (...) Wasn't COBOL started in 1959? By the time COBOL was developed, my dad (1) was writing FORTRAN compilers for whatever platform he needed (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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| (...) I have to admit, I'm something of an anti-COBOL bigot. That has obviously clouded my judgement, but I can't see what COBOL could do that FORTRAN wasn't already doing more cleanly and efficiently, on the same platforms. Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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