Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 9/27/24 4:38 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:
 

On 9/27/24 13:43, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>

On 2024-09-27, geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> wrote:
>

Cobol was also very portable.

>
As long as your destination compiler supports COMP-3.  :-)

>
Or your source computer didn't have COMP-3, or if you didn't use it.

 I was once called in to optimize a CPU-bound COBOL program.
The genius who wrote it declared all subscripts as COMP-3.
Changing them to COMP-4 knocked 30% off the execution time.

   Did COBOL even HAVE real "types" ???
   It was not really a "sophisticated" language.
   It was MEANT mostly for biz/commercial apps,
   esp financial and scheduling. It was GOOD at
   that - except for being TOO ugly/confusing in
   the chase to be "simple/self-documenting".
   I don't hate COBOL - it HAD/HAS its place.
   However the real-world implementation could
   never live-up to "The Vision".
   COBOL could/can be "improved" - made more
   efficient. But NOBODY is gonna DO that
   these days. As such COBOL kinda becomes
   like 'Latin' - an unchanging 'dead' lang.
   This MAY be a good thing.