Re: CoBOL moved to OO

From: Arnold Trembley (arnold.trembley_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 12/29/03 

Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:02:41 GMT

Kevin Hansen wrote:

> (snip)
> I must confess that I find it odd - and a bit frustrating after 30
> years of being, I think, a reasonably motivated and competent
> programmer - that OO remains elusive.

That's exactly the position I am in, although I have only been
programming in COBOL for 25 years. I don't "get" what an "object" is,
and I certainly don't get what a "class hierarchy" is.

I certainly cannot argue against program re-use. We re-use code all
the time, with copybooks, called subprograms, and even by cloning
programs (although I suppose this wrecks inheritance and polymorphism).

I am deeply suspicious of recursion, and I have read that almost any
recursion algorithm can be adapted to simple iteration. One of the
most intelligent programmers I ever met (who also had mainframe
experience) told me that it would be far better to study
object-oriented analysis & design and then code in a procedural
language than to jump into coding in an OO Language without the
background in OO analysis & design.

At my age, the bosses seem to think my time is too valuable to spend
in coding. Naturally, I think they're wrong about that. 

-- 
http://arnold.trembley.home.att.net/