[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Den 2018-01-24 kl. 17:03, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
> On 1/24/2018 10:51 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>> Den 2018-01-24 kl. 16:36, skrev DaveFroble:
>>> I'll preface the question by admitting that I view much of the "new 
>>> languages" as some people who just want to "re-invent the wheel".
>>>
>>> Do the "new languages" actually present more and better capabilities?
>>
>> Is a screwdriver better then a hammer? I would guess that you
>> understand that the answer is that "it depends"...
> 
> Some languages are better for some things than for other things.
> 
> Languages are designed with certain usage in mind. So they are
> often good for that usage and rather poor for other.
> 

Isn't that just what I just wrote? That "it depends"? Or am I
missing some point you are trying to make?

>> In our case, Cobol is "best" for our core applications since it
>> gives smooth and fast applications for our end-users.
> 
> I find it hard to believe that Cobol is the only language that
> could provide that.
> 

Now, the context was *our* core applications. But yes, strictly
technically, one could write the applications in a number of other
(compiled) languages, but Cobol gives stable code with few options
to "shoot yourself in the foot". We would not be able to rewrite
all our Cobol code in Java (or Python), the performance would go down
the drain. We need stable response times to the factory equipment
including database updates.

Now, just speculating, but I think that it is easier to read 20-30
year old and badly commented/documented Cobol code than 20-30 year
old and badly commented/documented C code. I might be wrong... :-)

Jan-Erik.


> Arne