[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/24/2018 10:45 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 01/24/2018 10:36 AM, DaveFroble wrote:
>> 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?
> 
> Some do, for particular things.  Try writing a mobile app in Fortran.

Just finding a Fortran compiler for the mobile platform may be
a problem.

> But for much of the real work that drives business (like processing
> credit card transactions or computing actuary tables languages like
> COBOL and Fortran are still really the best choice.

I am highly skeptical about that.

Credit card transaction processing is traditionally done in Cobol, but
I can not see any particular characteristics in Cobol that many newer
languages does not have. I suspect that the main reason for Cobol's
dominance in this market is that Cobol was the best language when the
code was original written and that rewriting is considered too
risky/expensive/interrupting.

Fortran has never been widely used for business processing.

>                                                       The only thing
> driving the move away from them is academia's decision to drive the bus
> off a cliff rather than preparing students for entry into the IT world
> (their actual job!!) by not only not teaching the requisite languages
> but trying to sway students into believing the languages are dead and
> totally unused.

Or maybe programming languages has also improved like most other
areas in IT.

:-)

Arne