[Info-vax] Licenses on VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source code listing scans

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/13/2021 3:44 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/13/21 1:26 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> Computer Science never liked Cobol - they were on the Algol
>> and Pascal wagon back in the 60's and 70's.
> 
> There was no CS in the 60's and only later in the 70's  It was
> just a sideline for math departments.

Purdue University Computer Science Department was established in 1962.

https://www.cs.purdue.edu/history/index.html

>                                      In any event, most CS
> departments had two tracks CS and CIS.  CS played with Unix
> and C and CIS was COBOL, PL/1 (in IBM dominated areas like
> Marist College) and even some RPG and 360 BAL.

Somebody had to teach languages used.

>> Lesser academic educations teaching programming typical
>> dropped Cobol in the 90's due to lack of demand.
> 
> We kept a COBOL course on the books well into the 90's but it
> was never offered.  COBOL was used in a mandatory (for both CS
> and CIS programs) course, Until the early 2000's.

That was later than most places, but ...

>                                                It was done
> using DEC COBOL until the day they made me remove the last VMS
> machines from my data center.  It was not unsuitability that
> resulted in these changes it was politics.  Both VMS and COBOL
> were seen as "legacy". Something the students shouldn't even
> be introduced to.  VMS was easier to get rid of because all
> they had to do was tell me to get rid of the hardware.  COBOL
> took a little longer (and a lot more work) because the course
> using it had to be redone.
> 
>> Cobol first got OO features in 2002.
>>
>> It is pretty obvious from the timeline that lack of interest
>> in OO Cobol was not the reason for Cobol's missing presence
>> in education.
> 
> Really?  Then where do you assign the blame?

Lack of demand for the skill.

Most students know somebody in the industry and if they hear
that companies hire C, C++, Java, Delphi, VB6 (late 90's!) then
they do not go for Cobol. Most students want to work with the
new growing languages not with old declining languages.

The fact that there may a great career in old languages
because old code tend to continue running for decade after decade
rarely appeals to students.

And that some of the then growing languages went in decline pretty
quickly (Delphi and VB6 turned out to decline faster than Cobol!)
was also not considered.

>> Computer science did push OOP back in the 80's and 90's. But
>> the industry was very much involved as well (Apple: object-pascal
>> and objective-c; Borland: later Turbo Pascal, Delphi;
>> Microsoft: C++; SUN: C++, Java). And even some of the
>> academic research was funded by the industry (AT&T, Xerox etc.), so
>> OO is not an academic thing.
> 
> It started there and once they stopped teaching non-OOP pardigms
> what did the people coming out to places like AT&T, Apple, Xerox,
> etc. know other than OOP?

When they did their research back in the 80's everybody knew
procedural programming. They wanted to do something differently.

>> And it has thrived because of the value it provides - not because
>> universities pushed it. The last 10-20 years Computer Science
>> has pushed FP not OOP. But true FP has never really caught on
>> in the industry. Most OOP languages got a few FP features and
>> they are used for convenience, but not enough to be true FP.
> 
> Sadly, I think OOP is going to be here a long time.  I am just
> glad the people working where it is not a good fit have resisted
> it.  I still do COBOL.  Mostly just for fun, but it is still
> interesting.  You should go over to Rosetta Code and see all the
> things COBOL does that aren't even in its wheelhouse.

Cobol was intended as a business application language but it is
enough general purpose to that almost everything can be done
in it.

Arne