Re: Odd behaviur...

From: Bruce Roberts (ber_at_bounceitattcanada.xnet)
Date: 09/01/04 

Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 10:07:21 -0400

"David Reeve" <dree4456@big-pond.net.au> wrote in message
news:dgaZc.15201$D7.3055@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

> Roll back fifteen years to a happier time when apps were very much
smaller,
> and C was a language suitably scaled to the problems then in hand. When I
> wrote an app, my actual application code often exceeded the included
library
> code, simply because there was very little library support. For example,
all
> scientific plotting was done by our own library, all comms using our comms
> library, and as for GUI, what's that? When you only have a handfull of
> libraries, most of which are your own, the includes are easily managed.

I think that the real reason C became so popular was simple economics. C
came with UNIX which was esstentially free in academic environments. An
entire generation of programmers frustrated with simplistic and restrictive
pedagogical languages like Pascal and BASIC had access to a truely powerful
real world language in C. Add to that the then revolutionaly building block
approach of UNIX which encouraged users to write short little programs that
could be strung together with existing ones to make very powerful systems.
But the big factor was that it was free and ran on tiny machines, so it was
everywhere. Contrast that with the FORTRAN, COBOL, etc. compilers on the big
iron. Expensive machines, just as expensive compilers. Rare and valuable
resources.

> maintained within the Delphi environment. However, roll on a few more
years
> when that small company is bought out by very large organisation..... the
> shrieks of dismay on discovering the software is in other than C++ were
> really too terrible. It is only then that you begin to realize how
> uninformed, how irrational, how beligerent are the forces that hold C/C++
in
> the mainstream.

But its always fun to ask them if they have ever heard of the COBOL
programming language :). (It was the 70's and 80's equivalent of C today.
Same type of zealotry, same type of demand. In fact it wouldn't surprise me
to find out that there are still more lines of COBOL being run that C. And
the demand for COBOL programmers today is?)

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Java compatibility issues (WAS: MF having issues?)
    ... language it can do most of what C, C++, and Java can do. ... 2002 COBOL standard addresses that, but having a standard is a far ... Some flavours do have libraries. ... On the IBM mainframe we have Language Environment but it does ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: GoTo in Java
    ... were a year or two down the track and everybody was very happy with OCaml. ... > language switch would pay off in faster development (due in part to ... COBOL as a scripting language for .NET. ... Compare this with COBOL programmers discussing Java... ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: COBOLs Influence on C
    ... Cobol is the only language that has this problem. ... sure that the libraries containing ANYTHING that might be called are on ... And that is one reason why installations have Local Standards... ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Infinite Loops and Explicit Exits
    ... but C programmers know not to do it that way. ... not what Cobol programmers want. ... null-terminated memory format is unsuited to storage in a file. ... What kind of programming language doesn't natively support ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: How proprietary is the "COBOL file system"
    ... like RDB, for the same reason. ... COBOL was left behind. ... businesses to keep their old language, or to go to a new language: ... they have mainframe programmers and web programmers. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)