Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!ukma!xanth!mcnc!thorin!weiss!barkley
From: barkley@weiss.cs.unc.edu (Matthew Barkley)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Ada vs. COBOL study
Summary: Record I/O
Message-ID: <8109@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 11 May 89 17:08:30 GMT
References: <39400015@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <5314@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Lines: 19

In article <5314@hubcap.clemson.edu>, billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe,2847,) writes:
> 
>     ... a far more advanced language.

      Ada, that is.

I have used FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, C, and BASIC during the last 20
years.  None of the other 4 comes close to COBOL in that language's
real strengths:  Record-oriented I/O and reporting.  I have not used
Ada, but I suspect that it isn't any better than the others.  The ease
of formatting an output page in COBOL (with all the nasty editing done
for you) just doesn't exist anyhwere else, in my non-Ada experience.
Can Ada really do as well?  Those who haven't used both Ada and COBOL
need not reply; I'm looking for experience, not speculation.


Matt Barkley                                           barkley@cs.unc.edu
Any opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by anyone else, and may 
not even be my own. How an organization can have an opinion is beyond me.