Re: The joy of FORTRAN

186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:

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.
 
 

I think they’ve added a lot to COBOL over the years - real subroutines with
parameters instead pf just PERFORM.

--
Pete