In college, COBOL was all the rage, and I actually got pretty
good at it, after taking three semesters- including COB-1,
COB-2, and Advanced COBOL. I never did LIKE it, just got good
at the language... and then moved on to "C" as soon as possible
while out in the 'real' world.
From the beginning, I knew that COBOL ROTTS THE BRAIN, compared
to other languages. I even liked assembler better- you had more
control, room for creativity, and flexability.
** Deep in its heart of hearts, COBOL >still< thinks that it is
** dealing with thousands of punch cards- just VERY fast.
I finally swore off COBOL entirely, after working on a COBOL
project in Ft. Worth TX (USA) in 1989- for an insurance company
where I was working on software originally designed and coded
by Arthur Anderson, then sold to another company, which merged
with a third. Each company mangled the code further, and all
documentation was lost somewhere along the way.
By the time I saw it, I was running into single FD (file descrip)
entries, that were *32* PAGES long! where somebody's favorite
keyword was 'redefines'.
For the "C"/unix types in the croud- an FD entry is the COBOL
equivalent to a 'struct' in "C", and is usually about 15-25 lines
not 30 pages - and a redefines clause overlaps multiple data
structures into the same memory - like 'union' in "C".
Needless to say, this was NOT a pretty sight. I have not coded
a single COBOL program since, and don't usually even admit to
prospective employers that I remember how. |
