smk90219@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (11/28/89)
Well, I know I'm technically nobody, but I'm curious: Are you sure cobol isn't dead? I thought it had been replaced by, say, Natural/Adabas, Modula, C++, etc. At least here in the U.S. -- Just Wondering
econrad@thor.wright.edu (Eric Conrad) (11/30/89)
From article <117400004@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>, by smk90219@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu: > > Well, I know I'm technically nobody, but I'm curious: > Are you sure cobol isn't dead? I thought it had been replaced by, say, > Natural/Adabas, Modula, C++, etc. > At least here in the U.S. > > -- Just Wondering Well, I've been away from the real world for about two years but it seems like COBOL is still the biggie in the business world despite annual post-mortems by people here in academia. Most of the languages which purport to replace it either don't support a reasonable file model or can't do fixed-point arithmetic in base ten. Not that people who program in it love the language. I never yet met a COBOL fanatic. It just did what it was supposed to, albeit clumsily. -- Eric Conrad
wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) (11/30/89)
In article <859@thor.wright.EDU>, econrad@thor.wright.edu (Eric Conrad) writes: > From article <117400004@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>, by smk90219@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu: > > > > Well, I know I'm technically nobody, but I'm curious: > > Are you sure cobol isn't dead? [ ... ] > > Well, I've been away from the real world for about two years but it > seems like COBOL is still the biggie [ ... ] Yep, COBOL is one of the main languages we see here. (We assist 3rd party software vendors in porting their applications to our UNIX platforms). In order of popularity (from my memory, not objective figures) the languages we see are COBOL, C, 4GLs, BASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal. We also get the occasional request for FORTH, PL/I, Mumps, C++, LISP, Modula-2, Prolog, etc. -- Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant rutgers!cbmvax!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh Unisys UNIX Portation Center "Unless you are very rich and very eccentric, P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121 you will not enjoy the luxury of a computer Blue Bell, PA 19424 in your own home", Edward Yourdon, 1975.
duncan@dduck.ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan) (11/30/89)
In article <117400004@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> smk90219@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >Are you sure cobol isn't dead? I thought it had been replaced by, say, > >Natural/Adabas, Modula, C++, etc. > >At least here in the U.S. > > -- Just Wondering As far as the commercial data processing community goes COBOL is more than alive in the US. There is probably more COBOL code still in production than anything else. Vendors continue to produce tools to support COBOL development, e.g., most CASE tools seem either to be exclusively COBOL oriented or mainly so. In more engineering and scientific markets FORTRAN and C seem very healthy with Ada making respectable advances. Commercial organization are definitely looking at altrernatives to COBOL as they get more involved in non-traditional business applications (communica- tions, networking, real-time). But COBOL is not going away and will remain common if companies go more towards code generation technology since COBOL is what many vendors offer today. (Even if the code generation issue may make it irrelevant what's being generated underneath. I say "may" because, even though it should, we are at the assembly language vs high-level language phase in arguments about performance/efficiency of such code.) Speaking only for myself, of course, I am... Scott P. Duncan (duncan@ctt.bellcore.com OR ...!bellcore!ctt!duncan) (Bellcore, 444 Hoes Lane RRC 1H-210, Piscataway, NJ 08854) (201-699-3910 (w) 609-737-2945 (h))