Re: Reviving REMARKS

In fact the structured layout of the IDENTIFICATION DIVISION with its
fixed paragraph names encouraged the inclusion of significant
documentation in a standardized way. Every language has a commenting
facility. What was unique about the ID DIV was that it had a standard
format. The standard mavens, in their eternal and rather foolish quest
to make COBOL "just like" every other language gave up some of its
unique virtues.

Fortunately compiler writers tend to cater to old programs and hence
features stay in long past their scheduled execution date. Hopefully I
will still be able to use the ID DIV the way GMH intended for the rest
of my programming career.

BTW the "self documenting" nature of the language does not tell the
person reading a program years later the who what when why of the
creation of the program. And without someencouragement programmers
will take the easy way out. How many internally documented program
written in Java or Perl have you seen lately? In a text book, maybe.
A "generalized commenting facility" may as well be no facility at all.
Programmers are busy and will skip over it.

(end grump)

John Culleton

.

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