[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 01/24/2018 02:20 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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.

That wasn't the question.  Given a Fortran compiler how successful
do you think one would be trying to write a mobile app?  Sure it
can be done.  Heck, I could probably write an OS in APL, but I sure
wouldn't want to try and I doubt it would be very successful.

> 
>> 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.

Never said it was.  But things like Actuary Tables are  not what most
people think of when they think business.  But is certainly is to an
Insurance Company.  How about The Census Bureau? How would you class
them?  They still use Fortran and they still write new programs in it.

> 
>>                                                       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.

As have COBOL and Fortran.  To continue to meet the needs of a specific
domain.  So why then would you use a generic language?  Do you speak
Esperanto?  Theory was with Esperanto no one would need to learn more
than two languages.  His native and Esperanto, a generic language for
all.  How did that work out?  There are just some things that don't
translate accurately.  The same is true of programming languages.  If
you have a language available that was specifically designed for your
task why would you choose to use one that wasn't specifically designed
for any task?

bill