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Tar -> BSD -> Unix wars -> SCO vs IBM -> Trade secret -> Trade dress ->
Honeywell -> Burroughs Corporation
-> Stack machine -> Accumulator machine -> Register machine -> Counter
machine -> Pointer machine -> Random access machine -> Random access
stored program machine
-> FORTRAN
-> Arithmetic IF
-> Front panel
-> Modula-2 -> Oberon -> F
-> ALGOL
-> P-code machine -> UCSD Pascal -> Ada
-> Lisp machine
-> Whetstone
-> COBOL
Like, TOTALLY RETRO, man!
I'm really loving this quote:
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense." (Dijkstra)
Seeing the 8-line Hello World implementation, I'm tending to agree...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Tar -> BSD -> Unix wars -> SCO vs IBM -> Trade secret -> Trade dress ->
> Honeywell -> Burroughs Corporation
>
> -> Stack machine -> Accumulator machine -> Register machine -> Counter
> machine -> Pointer machine -> Random access machine -> Random access
> stored program machine
>
> -> FORTRAN
> -> Arithmetic IF
> -> Front panel
> -> Modula-2 -> Oberon -> F
>
> -> ALGOL
> -> P-code machine -> UCSD Pascal -> Ada
> -> Lisp machine
> -> Whetstone
>
> -> COBOL
>
> Like, TOTALLY RETRO, man!
>
> I'm really loving this quote:
>
> "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
> regarded as a criminal offense." (Dijkstra)
>
> Seeing the 8-line Hello World implementation, I'm tending to agree...
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
There are days that I tend to agree with that too. Though I am not a COBOL
programmer, I am tech support for a medium size mainframe operating system, and
have to deal with a programming staff of COBOL programmers. When a select few
of them have problems, and its always the same select few, I have to help them
debug their programs. Though we have some very sharp people working here, there
are some I don't know how they find their way to work every morning.
As an aside, have you ever looked at PL/I. My second programming job was at a
PL/I shop. It has some nice features, but also some strange idiosyncrasies.
As the wikipedia entry on PL/I points out, there are no reserved keywords in
the language, thus you can have variable names like IF, THEN or ELSE etc. Sot
the following statement is perfectly valid:
IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;
This can lead to some very difficult debugging.
Isaac
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>> "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
>> regarded as a criminal offense." (Dijkstra)
>>
>> Seeing the 8-line Hello World implementation, I'm tending to agree...
>
> There are days that I tend to agree with that too. Though I am not a COBOL
> programmer, I am tech support for a medium size mainframe operating system, and
> have to deal with a programming staff of COBOL programmers. When a select few
> of them have problems, and its always the same select few, I have to help them
> debug their programs. Though we have some very sharp people working here, there
> are some I don't know how they find their way to work every morning.
I went to uni with a bunch of people who were taught COBOL rather than
Pascal at college. (Apparently due to the Y2K marketin- uh, concerns.) I
don't know much about COBOL myself. All I heard is "if you miss out one
dot, the compiler will report an error message 800 lines later".
(I don't know whether that's true or not, but any programming language
where beginners might realistically write an 800 line program worries me!)
> So the following statement is perfectly valid:
>
> IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;
>
> This can lead to some very difficult debugging.
That's fairly tame compered to the lambda calculus. (Then again... no
sane human being writes programs using the lambda calculus!)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Clarence1898 wrote:
>
> IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;
>
Anyone who writes a program construct like that deserves to be shot ...
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
> >> regarded as a criminal offense." (Dijkstra)
> >>
> >> Seeing the 8-line Hello World implementation, I'm tending to agree...
> >
> > There are days that I tend to agree with that too. Though I am not a COBOL
> > programmer, I am tech support for a medium size mainframe operating system, and
> > have to deal with a programming staff of COBOL programmers. When a select few
> > of them have problems, and its always the same select few, I have to help them
> > debug their programs. Though we have some very sharp people working here, there
> > are some I don't know how they find their way to work every morning.
>
> I went to uni with a bunch of people who were taught COBOL rather than
> Pascal at college. (Apparently due to the Y2K marketin- uh, concerns.) I
> don't know much about COBOL myself. All I heard is "if you miss out one
> dot, the compiler will report an error message 800 lines later".
>
> (I don't know whether that's true or not, but any programming language
> where beginners might realistically write an 800 line program worries me!)
>
> > So the following statement is perfectly valid:
> >
> > IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;
> >
> > This can lead to some very difficult debugging.
>
> That's fairly tame compered to the lambda calculus. (Then again... no
> sane human being writes programs using the lambda calculus!)
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
Since I am unfamiliar with lambda calculus, not being taught in the FORTRAN
class I took at college, I looked it up on wikipedia. After a few paragraphs,
my eyes glazed over and could no longer focus. At least I now understand where
the lambda function in Python came from. As far as COBOL is concerned, we
typically assign new programmers to maintaining existing programs, some of
which are over 15000 lines long. I have heard that programs that size are not
that unusual in the COBOL world.
Isaac
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>> IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;
>
> Anyone who writes a program construct like that deserves to be shot ...
...unless it's for an obfuscated coding competition, in which case they
probably deserve a medal...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>>> IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;
>> That's fairly tame compered to the lambda calculus.
> Since I am unfamiliar with lambda calculus, not being taught in the FORTRAN
> class I took at college, I looked it up on wikipedia. After a few paragraphs,
> my eyes glazed over and could no longer focus.
What do you mean?
λn· n (λj· (λx· (λy· y))) (λx· (λy· x))
It means "n == 0". What's so hard about that? ;-)
> At least I now understand where
> the lambda function in Python came from.
Yeah, probably.
> As far as COBOL is concerned, we
> typically assign new programmers to maintaining existing programs, some of
> which are over 15000 lines long. I have heard that programs that size are not
> that unusual in the COBOL world.
I hope I never have to touch COBOL!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> don't know much about COBOL myself. All I heard is "if you miss out one
> dot, the compiler will report an error message 800 lines later".
Well, I can tell you that if you spell it "IDNETIFICATION DIVISION" on
the first line, you'll get 700 error messages on a 300-line program. ;-)
COBOL wasn't bad for its time. It's wordy because everything is line
oriented, and it was supposed to be easy for non-programmers to read,
and a 32K machine with 4 meg of disk space and milisecond cycle times
was a high-end mainframe.
There's no dynamic layout or allocation of memory. operating systems
weren't nearly as uniform as they are today.
(COBOL has evolved, of course, but I'm talking in the 60's versions.)
> (I don't know whether that's true or not, but any programming language
> where beginners might realistically write an 800 line program worries me!)
It was, IIRC, some 350 lines to write a program to look through the
employee file and calculate and print how many days each employee had
been employed, in descending order. COBOL was pretty darn verbose.
A great deal of that was boilerplate, of course, identifying the
program, naming the files it used and the layouts of their records, etc
etc etc. The actual body of the code was probably 100 lines.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> COBOL wasn't bad for its time. It's wordy because everything is line
> oriented, and it was supposed to be easy for non-programmers to read,
> and a 32K machine with 4 meg of disk space and milisecond cycle times
> was a high-end mainframe.
I always got the impression that COBOL was the "BASIC" of the 70's,
while all real programmers used Fortran. (Heck, even nowadays some old
gurus state that real programmers use Fortran.)
--
- Warp
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On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:02:33 -0400, Warp wrote:
> I always got the impression that COBOL was the "BASIC" of the 70's,
Try the 60's. ;-)
Jim
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