Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/07/23/14:50:23
Martijn Lievaart wrote:
>Judson McClendon wrote
>>As both a BASIC and COBOL (at least) programmer yourself, would
>>you choose BASIC with no decimal variables over COBOL, to write
>>financial applications, assuming both were available?
>
>As a multi language programmer that wrote financial applications in (a.o.)
>COBOL and BASIC, if I have to choose from those two, it'll be BASIC.
>
>The only reason for choosing COBOL here would be portability. If portability
>is of any concern, you can rule out BASIC anyhow, so your question becomes
>non-sensible then.
I see you misapprehend what is important about COBOL. The vast majority
of COBOL programs are custom tailored code, written for a specific task
for one organization. This makes portability a second level issue.
Why do you think there are 30+ year old COBOL programs around? How many
even 10 year old C programs are still in active use, even though C has
been around since the 70's? COBOL isn't brain dead, it is very simple.
Remember, this isn't a question of which is the 'best' language. Such
a question misses the point of tools. It is like asking 'Which is best,
a hammer or a screwdriver?" The answer is "It depends on the task to be
done with it." There is no 'best' tool, and no 'best' programming
language, and there never will be. Computer languages, like any other
tool ever devised by man, are more or less applicable to certain kinds
of tasks. No tool is best for every task, and no programming language
is best for every programming task. My point about the compiler in COBOL
was simply to say that just because you can do something in a certain
language is no sign that it is a good choice. It is true that COBOL was
created before structured programming was a gleam in anybody's eye, not
to mention OO. But the language has been updated in a number of ways to
make it support much more structured programming techniques, and the new
standard under development supports OO.
The fact is this: There exists no programming language in which large
business applications can be developed more quickly, cheaply or reliably
than in COBOL. The 'conventional wisdom' you are speaking from is more
than 10 years out of date, and most large enterprise sized organizations
are well aware of the fact. Based on a recent (3-4 months old) massive
survey of over 1500 such agencies, several other facts are clear. One
is that the great majority of them (> 80% as I recall) plan on increasing
their use of COBOL to develop new applications. The reasons are very
easy to understand. Industry wide, only 16% of the attempts to rewrite
COBOL based mainframe apps using newer technologies have been successful.
The remaining 84% failed, from massive cost and/or time overruns,
failure to meet design goals, and extremely poor reliability, compared
to mainframe based COBOL systems. This is not an opinion, but hard,
cold fact. For example, a front page article in the Wall Street Journal
(about a year ago) explained how a number of large companies had spent
millions on the newer technology just to learn that, not only did it cost
a whole lot more, but even when it worked it did not work nearly as well
as had their old COBOL systems, some of them 20 years old. That article
reported that a number of those large companies had already rewritten
some of their systems in COBOL to much better results, and more are on
the way. The difference in costs between writing and debugging a large
business system in C/C++ vs. COBOL is almost staggering.
But my point here is not to push COBOL, and certainly not to attack
BASIC or any other language. My point is that tools are designed for
different purposes. BASIC and C/C++ are general purpose programming
languages, and neither was designed with an eye toward financial
programming. I is not reasonable or logical to expect them to do
every single task better than other languages designed specifically
for those tasks. I love BASIC, and have used it by choice almost every
day since 1975. Yes, I have written financial applications in BASIC,
but it was not my language of choice for that. I also like COBOL, not
because it is fun, but because it is very good for certain tasks, even
though it is very poor for other tasks. The wise programmer doesn't
cling to a specific programming language, but looks at them objectively.
It is just as important to see the warts as it is to see the beauty.
Learn as many languages as you can, and use each of them for tasks
where they make the most sense.
--
Judson McClendon judmc123 AT bellsouth DOT net (remove numbers)
Sun Valley Systems http://personal.bhm.bellsouth.net/~judmc
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
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