Re: A Plain English Compiler

Ivan Godard <ivan@ootbcomp.com>
Mon, 27 Oct 2014 15:07:23 -0700

          From comp.compilers
Related articles
[15 earlier articles]
Re: A Plain English Compiler gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com (2014-10-24)
Re: A Plain English Compiler lesliedellow@gmail.com (2014-10-25)
Re: A Plain English Compiler derek@knosof.co.uk (Derek M. Jones) (2014-10-25)
Re: A Plain English Compiler martin@gkc.org.uk (Martin Ward) (2014-10-27)
Re: A Plain English Compiler ak@akkartik.com (Kartik Agaram) (2014-10-27)
Re: A Plain English Compiler kaz@kylheku.com (Kaz Kylheku) (2014-10-27)
Re: A Plain English Compiler ivan@ootbcomp.com (Ivan Godard) (2014-10-27)
Re: A Plain English Compiler martin@gkc.org.uk (Martin Ward) (2014-10-28)
Re: A Plain English Compiler monnier@iro.umontreal.ca (Stefan Monnier) (2014-10-28)
Re: A Plain English Compiler DrDiettrich1@netscape.net (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2014-10-29)
Re: A Plain English Compiler gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com (Gerry Rzeppa) (2014-10-30)
Re: A Plain English Compiler gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com (Gerry Rzeppa) (2014-10-30)
Re: A Plain English Compiler gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com (Gerry Rzeppa) (2014-10-30)
[3 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |
From: Ivan Godard <ivan@ootbcomp.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 15:07:23 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
References: 06-02-122 06-02-125 14-10-005 14-10-008 14-10-009
Keywords: Cobol
Posted-Date: 28 Oct 2014 13:27:21 EDT

On 10/27/2014 12:25 PM, Kartik Agaram wrote:
>> John said (back in 2006) "You can certainly chop English down to
>> a small unambiguous subset, but then you've just reinvented Cobol"


> [COBOL has an undeserved poor reputation largely among people who've
> never used it. Yes, it's wordy, deliberately so, and its facilities
> for control structure are weak by modern standards, but it invented
> the structured data we now take for granted in languages like C and
> C++ and has a wider range of datatypes than most of its successors.
> For its time and its intended application it was a huge success.
> -John]


Agreed. COBOL is the Rodney Dangerfield of languages; it don't get no
respect. It's really organized around name/value pairs (think MOVE
CORRESPONDING), but with a much nicer syntax than raw XML.

Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.