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From: mac@harris.cis.ksu.edu (Myron A. Calhoun)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C argument
Summary: Keep an open mind
Message-ID: <1990Dec5.175744.11236@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 90 17:57:44 GMT
Expires: 19 December 1990
References: <28621@usc>
Sender: news@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (The News Guru)
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Organization: Kansas State University, Dept. of Computing and Information Sciences
Lines: 41

In article <28621@usc> ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:

    [many lines deleted here 'n there]

>Consider a close relative of Fortran on this front: Cobol.
>Nobody seriously thinks Cobol is a "good" language.  Nobody
>fights religious wars on it: I've seen people who would argue
>for Cobol and I just ignore them.  

Then maybe you ought to reconsider your openness to reason
(NOTE:  I'm NOT asking you to reconsider COBOL!-).

****** IF ONE WERE DISCUSSING THE READABILITY OF CODE *******
                                  ===================
then well-written COBOL code would probably win hands-down over well-
written code of 'most any other languages.  COBOL is (or can be) a
very READABLE language.  FORTRAN might be somewhere in the middle of
the list, and C and LISP probably wouldn't even appear in the standings!

COBOL has some very useable features (in the context for which it was
written) that modern languages don't touch.  For example, sorting,
searching (even including binary searching) are built-in verbs; it
includes decimal arithmetic, etc.

And sometimes COBOL has features that more-modern languages like to
brag about:  "strong typing", for example.  In its own way, COBOL has
"strong typing", but in describing such features, COBOL texts just
don't use the same WORDS as textbooks for newer languages (the term
"strong typing" hadn't been "invented" 'way back then, for example.)

But COBOL "stinks" in some other ways; I'm not trying to defend or
shoot it down; I'm saying that it (like most languages) has its
strong and its weak points.  And if you reject it out of hand,
you may be missing something.
--Myron.
--
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