Re: [open-cobol-list] Best online and text tutorials?

[boscagarda-programming]

Holy full of crap batman!

I just read that blog report. Ya know, EVERY time I run into
someone who claims they don't like COBOL and they HAVE
used it, I found out they don't know anything. Practically
everything he said in there is just factually wrong.

I don't have to ask if he has drunk the java Kool-Aid, obviously
he has.

How self documenting is COBOL? I've had my boss, who is
not a programmer, read a COBOL program and tell me what
it was doing. He was able to explain it just fine. Would he
be able to change it without knowing the reserved words?
No, of course not, but he could understand a well written
program in COBOL. You can't say that about Java, PHP,
C or most other languages from a non-programmer.

Anyhow John, those of us that love COBOL won't be leaving
our roots. I'd actually prefer the use of line numbers, but would
like a program to manage that automatically for me. So far
as some experimentation, I just want to show what can be
done with a COBOL program, not always what you will do
with one. It's much maligned over things that people have
no idea about.

http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-cobol-1820.html

has my 99 bottles of beer program. Comments on that page
are welcome to make that version even better.

----- Original Message ----
From: Brian Tiffin <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 1:03:51 PM
Subject: Re: [open-cobol-list] Best online and text tutorials?

Well spoken John.  I'll agree as well.  The short hello was an exercise in
possibilities, not good form or professionalism.  That sample is highlighting
OpenCOBOL's robost and wide coverage, more than good practise.  And, when it
unveils soon, you will see the Hello World that occurs in most of the FAQ is
more inline with historically easy to read COBOL (and even includes sequence
numbers).

    000100* HELLO.COB OpenCOBOL FAQ example
    000200 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
    000300 PROGRAM-ID. hello.
    000400 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    000500    DISPLAY "Hello World!".
    000600    STOP RUN.

The exercise was partly the result of a thread on the forum caused in response
to a very misleading technology "architect"'s blog entry and a comment about
not being able to count the number of lines in a Hello World program.

http://duckdown.blogspot.com/2008/06/mainframe-is-not-evil-but-cobol-is.html

The one comment that really got me was the subtle linkage of COBOL and buffer
overflow security attacks.  Arrgghh!  Some people's kids ...  :)

Cheers,
Brian

On August 11, 2008 08:25:44 am John Culleton wrote:
> On Saturday 09 August 2008 11:34:30 am Brian Tiffin wrote:
> > On August 9, 2008 12:57:52 am address@hidden
>
> wrote:
> > > I would state that a simple Hello World Program in COBOL
> > > has become MUCH simpler than his example. We no long
> > > are required to have all those sections or even the preceding
> > > line numbers.
> >
> > Yeah, on the opencobol.org forum (and in the soon to be unveiled
> > FAQ), hello world is as short as
> >
> > program-id.hello.procedure division.display "Hello World!".
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Brian
>
> There was a language in my youth called APL whose fan base reveled in
> creating one line programs. I hope COBOL  and its fan base has not
> been reduced to that level. An important and unique feature of COBOL
> is that it was designed to be read as well as written.  It is
> intended to be a self-documenting language. While recent versions
> have strayed far from that original concept the thought of reducing a
> sample program to one line is a violation of one of the key features
> that makes COBOL different from other languages. Just because you can
> do it doesn't mean you should do it.
>
> Another key feature of COBOL is that it is a file handling language.
> Hence my template includes the major headers required for file
> handling.
>
> The use of line numbers  is a matter of personal taste. As an old time
> COBOL dude I prefer them.  Ditto upper case versus lower case.  But
> many compilers will choke on a program that lacks all four divisions.
> Hence an example program that omits them is IMO a misleading one.
>
> I would at a minimum rearrange the one-liner thus:
>
> identification division.
> program-id. hello.
> procedure division.
>      display "Hello World!".
>      stop run.
>
> IMO of course.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> John Culleton
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------



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