[Info-vax] [OT] Programming languages on Unix, was: Re: [OT] Unix terminal drivers

[Paul Sture]

On Mon, 21 May 2012 16:59:24 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote:

> Paul was looking for free/low cost COBOL for Unix which is what I
> pointed him to. If you want support and someone to call when things go
> wrong, I am sure there are various vendors who will gladly take your
> money in return for letting you run their version of COBOL on various
> versions of Unix.

To put this into context Simon, about 4 years ago someone was asking for 
help getting some tax tables into Excel.  I took a look at the file 
layouts and they screamed COBOL at me.  As proof of concept, I wrote a 
piece of COBOL using my Hobbyist Alpha (it took me all of 15 minutes* and 
I got a clean compile on the first pass), but I didn't feel comfortable 
using that because there was a large chance it could turn into a 
commercial project.

* obviously a proper product would take somewhat longer than 15 minutes, 
but it proved that using COBOL was the easiest way to deal with the data. 
26 sets of tax tables, one for each canton in Switzerland, so automation 
had to be far easier than slogging through 26 Excel imports.

So I was looking for a COBOL compiler which I could run on my OS X system 
where I wasn't constrained by the Hobbyist licence.

Since then, I've got the hang of the freeware concepts and would take 
that route instead, but at the time I was having difficulty with the idea 
of working for free and seeing others make money out of my work.

> (As for the other language pointers, I included those in case people
> were interested in the other languages I mentioned.)

Much appreciated. Thanks.

-- 
Paul Sture