Re: [open-cobol-list] On forum registration problems

[John Culleton]

On Saturday, August 06, 2011 10:19:59 am David Jackson wrote:

> Thank you for the reply to my message, it is greatly appreciated. Hopefully

> the problems can be fixed.

>

> I am a COBOL hobbyist and I am so glad that OpenCOBOL is here since I have

> long had an interest in learning COBOL and now I can.

>

> Does OpenCOBOL include any object oriented features? I know with many

> non-OO languages you can simulate objects, such as with a function pointer

> in a struct in C, but the syntax is not particularly easy to write or

> elegant, C++ added an OO extension to make things more elegant. Has there

> been anything similar in regards to OpenCOBOL?

While COBOL 2000 makes some passes at OO features, frankly I am against it. The whole philosophy of OO is different than that of

COBOL. Indeed I have standardized on COBOL 85 with some features of COBOL 68 et seq. in the IDENTIFICATION DIVISION, which has been sytematically butchered in later versions.

They tell the story of the tourist asking directions of the Vermont farmer. The farmer after several attempts says "Mister, if I wanted to go to St. Johnsbury I wouldn't start from here."

If you want OO I wouldn't start with COBOL. Use an OO designed language like Ruby.

One of COBOL's strengths is the ability of Programmer A to read and understand the logic of a program written by Programmer B. OO just muddies the waters for the rest of us.

OpenSource COBOL is COBOL 85 plus a few later features. Gary Cutler has written an absolutely superb guide to OS COBOL as of version 1.1.

I suggest you read it.

--

John Culleton

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