drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) (08/25/87)
I believe that Grace Hopper has been promoted to Commodore, up from Captain. Cobol has been used for non-numerical work. One early compiler (from Hopper's shop) was written in Cobol in the early 50s. Hopper, in order to prove that non-numerical programming was *possible*, wrote a symbolic differentiation program. One person this was demonstrated to accused her of having a human feeding the results into the program by a back door! (This is likely to have been well before compilers were written, but perhaps not...) The original Cobol project was an attempt to put together a subset of English that would allow non-programmers to program computers, thus eliminating professional programmers. Halfway through, it was realized that this was impossible, so they changed the goal to produce a programming language that could be read by a non-programmer. Thus, the project that started out to eliminate programmers produced the language that 70-80% of all programmers work in! (ref Perlis's article in CACM blasting 'Star Wars') Dale -- Dale Worley Cullinet Software ARPA: cullvax!drw@eddie.mit.edu UUCP: ...!seismo!harvard!mit-eddie!cullvax!drw Apollo was the doorway to the stars - next time we should open it. Disclaimer: Don't sue me, sue my company - they have more money.
dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) (08/26/87)
In article <1490@cullvax.UUCP> drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes: >I believe that Grace Hopper has been promoted to Commodore, up from >Captain. Hopper was indeed promoted to Commodore. I believe the Navy recently got rid of the rank of Commodore again, returning to the strange practice of several years ago that lumps O-7s (= Brig Gen in the other services) and O-8s (= Major Gen) together as Rear Admirals, lower and upper half. (This odd terminology, especially in a service like the Navy, leads to some obvious jokes.) Anyway, I think Hopper retired after the wholesale conversion of Commodores to Rear Admirals, so she retired a Rear Admiral. -- D Gary Grady (919) 286-4296 USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary BITNET: dgary@ecsvax.bitnet
rmarks@bbking.PRC.Unisys.COM (richard marks) (08/26/87)
In article <1490@cullvax.UUCP> drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes: >Cobol has been used for non-numerical work. One early compiler (from >Hopper's shop) was written in Cobol in the early 50s. I once did a compiler (in the 80's) in Cobol. We wanted it to be 100% portable from our big 1100's to other manufacturer's boxes (blue ones). In fact, Cobol and Fortran may be the most portable languages. The compiler worked very well. The data structures in Cobol are good. I had to write one small assembler routine to get a block of memory and return a pointer that Cobol used as an array index. Implementation time, execution time, etc were very good. I would use Cobol again for such a project and I've written several compilers in other languages.
drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) (08/27/87)
dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) writes: > Hopper was indeed promoted to Commodore. I believe the Navy recently > got rid of the rank of Commodore again, returning to the strange > practice of several years ago that lumps O-7s (= Brig Gen in the other > services) and O-8s (= Major Gen) together as Rear Admirals, lower and > upper half. Someone explained to me that for a while the Navy didn't have O-7s at all, which caused problems because the big jump from O-6 to O-8 was hard to make. So they re-instituted Commodores, but that sounded wimpyer than Brig. Gen. They finally make O-7s a form of Admiral, so the set of ranks labelled Admiral would be the same as the set labelled General. Dale -- Dale Worley Cullinet Software ARPA: cullvax!drw@eddie.mit.edu UUCP: ...!seismo!harvard!mit-eddie!cullvax!drw Apollo was the doorway to the stars - next time we should open it. Disclaimer: Don't sue me, sue my company - they have more money.
wlinden@dasys1.UUCP (William Linden) (08/27/87)
In article <1490@cullvax.UUCP> drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes: >I believe that Grace Hopper has been promoted to Commodore, up from >Captain. Hopper retired last year, with the rank of Rear Admiral. N.Y. Times coverage of the departure of the grandmother of Cobol consisted of a photograph, and a caption which mentioned only that she was "the last of the World War II WAVES on active service"! -- Will Linden {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri!dasys1!wlinden {sun,well,ihnp4,amdahl}!hoptoad!dasys1!wlinden {cucard,bc-cis}!dasys1!wlinden
jholbach@wright.UUCP (08/29/87)
in article <1502@cullvax.UUCP>, drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) says: > Xref: wright comp.lang.ada:443 comp.lang.c:3073 comp.lang.misc:513 > > dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) writes: >> Hopper was indeed promoted to Commodore. I believe the Navy recently >> got rid of the rank of Commodore again, returning to the strange >> practice of several years ago that lumps O-7s (= Brig Gen in the other >> services) and O-8s (= Major Gen) together as Rear Admirals, lower and >> upper half. > > Someone explained to me that for a while the Navy didn't have O-7s at > all, which caused problems because the big jump from O-6 to O-8 was hard > to make. So they re-instituted Commodores, but that sounded wimpyer > than Brig. Gen. They finally make O-7s a form of Admiral, so the set > of ranks labelled Admiral would be the same as the set labelled > General. > The first explanation was correct -- we've always had O-7s and O-8s (which are both "pay-grades" and not "ranks"), it's just that the O-7s were Rear Admiral (lower half) and the O-8s Rear Admiral (upper half). When this was changed several years ago, the Navy hierarchy couldn't make up its collective mind between the title Commodore (which has some tradition behind it) and another suggested title Commodore Admiral (which has the magic phrase Admiral in it). Commodore finally won out, but was immediately unpopular with the next batch of newly selected O-7s who (if the articles in the Navy Times were correct) felt that the world did not accept that they were *real* admirals since their titles did not reflect that. Since this was nearly as momentous a question as whether sailors should receive a decoration merely for having gone to sea (we do *now*), the issue was finally resolved by going back to the way it was before. Speaking of naval tradition, we seem to have started a new tradition -- change something for the sake of change and then several years later, reinvent the wheel by going back to the way it was before. Ever wonder why sailors look like sailors again? Bell bottoms are back -- who the heck wants to enlist in an organization that wears coats and ties on the way to the Persian Gulf? "It's not just a job -- it's an adventure!" Jim Holbach