On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 22:13, Deryk Barker wrote: > Thus spake Ron Johnson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > > On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 17:34, Paul M Foster wrote: > > > On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 01:15:13AM -0500, Michael Heironimus wrote: > > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 11:57:27PM -0400, Al Davis wrote: > > > > > Learn the style, so when someone gives you a COBOL-style > > > > > program in C++, you will understand it. > > > > > > > > Do not underestimate the value of this. You can take a COBOL programmer > > > > and teach him C/C++/Java (or whatever popular language), and he'll pick > > > > up the syntax just fine. And as soon as you tell him to write something > > > > he'll write code that looks EXACTLY like COBOL in C/C++/Java syntax. It > > > > will be unreadable, unmaintainable, and hopelessly inefficient, but > > > > nobody will ever have time for the rewrite it desperately needs. > > > > > > I've heard about this before, but I don't think I've ever seen it. > > > Someday I'd like to see some "COBOL-like" code written in C. > > > > Instead of lots of small functions and a minimum of global variables, > > the classic code from a "bad COBOL programmer forced to write C" > > would have large main(), very few other functions, and all global > > variables. > > Which no doubt applied to the first few program I wrote in B (the > first HLL I used after 6 years of COBOL and assembler), but reading > other people's code is an excellent education. Just because somebody > of necessity used COBOL first does not make them a bad person.
Never said it did! (Although I might have been a bit too generic.) And you learned; the Bad COBOL Programmer I worked with never did. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ron Johnson, Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jefferson, LA USA "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time." Bertrand Meyer -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
