en/computer/cobolWEBlog -- Wouter's Eclectic Bloghttps://grep.be/blog//en/computer/cobol/WEBlog -- Wouter's Eclectic Blogikiwiki2014-03-01T13:42:06ZLuciana is doing that!https://grep.be/blog//en/computer/cobol/comment_1563/kov (kov@debian.org)2014-03-01T13:42:06Z2009-06-01T02:26:19Z
I could no believe at first, but Luciana actually <em>wanted</em> to come to Rio de Janeiro to work with COBOL. I even learned a small amount of it along with her, can you believe that? She's not done any actual COBOL coding yet, but it seems like she's either bound to do maintenance on some very weirdly written code (in which the firs columns <em>matter</em>, because the mainframe editor and compiler do care about the numbers that go there!), or help document it for people who are 'translating' the monstrosity to java (ugh).
Ok, COBOL is bad, but maybe it makes sensehttps://grep.be/blog//en/computer/cobol/comment_1564/Luciana Fujii (luciana@minaslivre.org)2014-03-01T13:42:06Z2009-06-01T03:11:54Z
<p>Hi Wouter,</p>
<p>I agree with you in that there's no reason why people should write new systems in COBOL. That said, in the old compilers used in old environments (where COBOL is meant to be) the 7 first columns of a COBOL code are suposed to have line numbers. In the company where I work some people like to use an editor, CANDE (it is actually more than an editor), that substitutes lines based on its line number.</p>
<p>You can also say 'foo = 1 + 1' like this: 'COMPUTE FOO = 1 + 1'. ADD is used mostly for += stuff.</p>
<p>Last of all, there is an on going project to convert COBOL code in java code where I work. It's really an automatic translation, so all flaws will be reproduced. I'll tell you later how it ends, so you can have hope (or not) that COBOL will eventually vanish.</p>