Re: Next generation COBOL?

Richard,

Also, it is SO simple that you could write and debug an
interpreter or translator for it in something like BASIC in a week or
so, so it should become ubiquitous for many of the things that VBA and
Java are now used for,


One of the problem of developing something is that it get ingrained to
the point that it becomes 'obvious'. What is 'easy' is, in fact, what
one is used to. I have no doubt that _you_ could write an interpreter
from scratch in a week, but that is because you would be starting from
a point of the full knowledge of what is required having done this
before, and of having control of the requirements and the reasons for
them.

You are absolutely right - what I am proposing is no shortcut for skills. Much of my experience is in OS and compiler development, so I have become pretty instinctive in building such things. Of course, there are hundreds but not many thousands of people with comparable skills. However, once the job has been done a few times, all a programmer would have to do is to take one of them and convert it to their present environment, which pretty much any competent programmer could do.

because of its 100% readability even by untrained people. 

It may well be 'readable' but that does not mean they will understand
the implications of what they are reading.

Of course, but getting basic understanding for free is a pretty big thing. Further, you can "speed read" COBOL in a way that doesn't work for any other computer language. Once a program has been written it goes into maintenance, and much of most maintenance efforts is just finding the right places to make the changes, which is MUCH easier in COBOL than in other computer languages.

Steve Richfie1d
.

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