Re: Next generation COBOL?

Herwig,

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. 

No. That depends in which language you are most fluent,
and what kind of abstractions you use in thinking.

I respectfully disagree. I am fluent in many computer languages, but I have NEVER been able to speed read any of them like well written COBOL.

If you were right, you could express the Schroedinger
Equation in plain English and make it more understandable
that way.

This is a VERY complex area. Only certain things can be stated in any particular language, and these are DIFFERENT for different languages. A simple challenge is to take some English sentences and re-write them yet retain EXACTLY the same meaning. This is usually impossible, or at least impractical. For this reason, exact translations to foreign languages are usually IMPOSSIBLE.

As luck would have it, I have some experience programming the Schroedinger equation (working with Ira Karp) at the University of Washington Physics department many years ago! The problem is that the "equation" is NOT a formula and is quite ill behaved with many singularities, so that just plugging numbers into it quickly results in numerical exceptions. In a real sense, it is there AS an explanation and NOT as an equation to be solved! We had to break it down into small pieces each expressed in 3 different ways, and go with the median results of the 3 methods for each piece!

Algebra was invented as a means of expression and manipulation to serve where natural languages failed. The parallels in computerdom would be one of the formula manipulation systems that people have developed.

I could envision future COBOLeze statements like:

	X where X^2 - 3 = 6.    would set X to +/-3

(Note here the indefinite sign, which is part of several proposals (including mine) for better computer arithmetic than IEEE-754 floating point. MOST computations made by present floating point hardware now produce WRONG results! For example, 1.0/3.0 = 0.33 (observing significance), and NOT 0.33333333 as computers now universally claim. This underlies the inability of present climate and economic simulators to produce stable long-term results.)

Perhaps this sort of capability COULD merge complex math and natural language. The whole goal of my posting is to "flush out" what would be needed for such a new language to succeed, and this might indeed help.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Steve Richfie1d
.

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