Re: Infinite Loops and Explicit Exits

From: Jeff York (ralf4_at_btinternet.com)
Date: 11/03/04 

Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 23:11:17 +0000

"Chuck Stevens" <charles.stevens@unisys.com> wrote:

>
>"Lueko Willms" <l.willms@jpberlin.de> wrote in message
>news:9K6g5M6uflB@jpberlin-l.willms.jpberlin.de...

<snip>

>> When the standards committee doesn't want to do that, then other
>> people will do, and have to do it.
>
>What positive impact on any given company's balance *** does forcing that
>company to rewrite existing programs so that they will continue to compile
>provide? One person's stylistic evangelism is another's stylistic
>extremism. Why *must* they rewrite a program just because it violates
>*style* conventions, and how much more money will they make as a direct
>result of having done so?
>
>Programs are *corporate assets*, and I believe the standards committees
>should not *require* the revision of existing, running programs solely on
>the grounds that they are written in a style somebody decided was yucky.

Absolutely. One of the saving graces of COBOL has been its strong
backwards-compatibility. Forcing companies to rewrite old but still
valid and working code, purely on style grounds, is a recipe for the
demise of the language. Anyone forced to undertake extensive rewrites
is going to first consider the alternatives - and all the "trendies"
pushing the "language du jour" are going to be given golden
opportunities to move to a "modern" language rather than clunky old
COBOL..

My company has code that has been essentially untouched for 20 years -
which works, is efficient, error-free and still does the job for which
is was designed. In it you will find GO TO, PERFORM THRU and
SECTIONs, but that was the style of the time in which it was written.
Having to rewrite would be an expensive and ultimately non-productive
(ie unprofitable) exercise - which might give one cause to think that
it's time to move to a "cheaper" language..

>And speaking of yucky style, as I write this I'm running the regression
>tests on a bug fix involving the ALTER verb. Instead of providing a fix for
>this high-priority trouble report, should I have insisted that our support
>staff tell the customer -- a large one, who is in the process of negotiating
>a Very Large Order for a Very Nice Machine: "Too bad, so sad, everybody
>knows ALTER's really yucky and you should have rewritten your program thirty
>years ago!"? I, for one, don't think so.

I feel quite left out here.. I've *never* seen a program with an
ALTER in it.. Perhaps I should write one, for perversity's sake. :-)

>After twenty years of working on language compilers, "nobody in his right
>mind would ever do that" has proven entirely and incontrovertibly irrelevant
>to whether I should make sure that "that" does exactly what it was
>originally supposed to do, and what it should continue to do so long as the
>customer desires that it continue to do so!

I remember a television advert from some many years ago that concluded
with the statement <in Broad Yorkshire Accent> "Aye lad.. Just
remember, the customer's *always* right.. Even when he's patently off
his trolley..". 

-- 
Jeff.         Ironbridge,  Shrops,  U.K.
jjy@jakfield.xu-netx.com  (remove the x..x round u-net for return address)
and don't bother with ralf4, it's a spamtrap and I never go there.. :)
... "There are few hours in life more agreeable
      than the hour dedicated to the ceremony
      known as afternoon tea.."
         Henry James,  (1843 - 1916).
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