4 ms·
I feel like one of the hallmarks of COBOL (imo) is that it was oriented around producing reports, or in other words its whole reason for existing was to do data
by zengid 8y ago
I feel like one of the hallmarks of COBOL (imo) is that it was oriented around producing reports, or in other words its whole reason for existing was to do data transformations from inputs to outputs. Early versions of Algol (like early versions of Haskell) couldn't do any I/O!
I think that is the amusing distinction between daydreaming academics and bean-counting business people: at the end of the day what does the language assist you with? For academics, Algol was a tool for thought. For business people, it was (and still is) a tool that helps them know how much money they are making and to make the machinations of their business function.
- User23 8y agoA key criterion any good programming language must satisfy is that programs written in it must be comprehensible. Getting the right results from your payroll reports is just as important as getting your Paxos implementation correct. However, since most so-called "business" programming has minimal algorithmic complexity, the languages used to write that can look quite different.
- rst 8y agoData transformations yes; reports were one case, but not the only one. The sample application in the FLOW-MATIC manual (online at Bitsavers) is a tape-to-tape job. (And there's quite a bit of stuff in COBOL, including things like MOVE CORRESPONDING, which suddenly make a lot more sense if you start to think of it as SQL for fixed-format records on tape drives.) http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/univac/flow-matic/ http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/univac/flow-matic/