Re: Is it always possible to write a COBOL program using only 1 sentence per paragraph?

"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3jse0aFrgk9nU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Howard Brazee" <howard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:db5qnq$rev$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > I'm close to this. The reason for structured code is to make it easier
> > for the human debugger...
>
> I have to disagree with you Howard. ( I don't enjoy it, because you are
> usually right and certainly one of the reasonable people here. :-))
>
> I contest your premise "The reason for structured code is to make it
easier
> for the human debugger."
>
> That is certainly _A_ benefit of structured code, but there are other
> reasons for structuring, that may be more important than this...benefits
> from avoiding duplication and encapsulating functionality into code
blocks,
> for example.

Call me a semantic nitpicker, Pete, but eliminating duplication and putting
functionality into compact code blocks sure sounds like a direct benefit to
us mere humans.

I have five bucks (US or NZ, your choice) says more than once in your long
and distinguished career you have commented with disparaging adjectives on
the work of others who put the same <expletive> code in seven different
places and you only found and fixed six on your first run; or took a single
business rule and devised a procedure which managed to separate the code
actually used by that procedure with 4000 or more lines of totally unrelated
source code plus two telephone area codes and a partridge in a pear tree.

Sure, there are resource issues resulting from duplication, and potentially
some efficiency issues from 'non-compactness' , but the bottom-line cost of
these is far, far less than the cost of programming - programming done by
humans.

MCM



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is it always possible to write a COBOL program using only 1 sentence per paragraph?
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