John, Perhaps you missed my long-passed comments that a future AI/AGI programming language should strongly resemble COBOL - at lease enough that the statements can all be grammatically correct English (or whatever other natural language the programmer is familiar with).
COBOL has something that NO other language has - the ability to be speed-read using the same neural circuitry that reads text. Further, many prospective programming errors cannot be expressed in English so they are simply not made, and others stick out like a sort thumb because they are so obviously nonsensical in English. Many non-programmers have read COBOL programs and found bugs they were looking for. Programmers spend MUCH more of their time reading than writing. Speed reading allows programmers to work on MUCH larger programs with the same amount of effort. An average bank has millions of lines of COBOL code, and SO few bugs that a couple of programmers can easily keep up with them, despite ongoing developments and modifications to track changing laws and operations. In this, COBOL is probably an order of magnitude ahead of other languages like C++ used in AI. The major problem with COBOL is political - it is like $2 bills that everyone tears the corners off of - people have been piling on poorly conceived additions that don't even make grammatical English for decades. The first COBOL manuals were ~50 pages, and now they resemble New York telephone directories. To illustrate, I once worked with Charlie Bachman - the original inventor of the database, initially IDS, later to become IDMS, and even later to have a statement supporting it inserted into the COBOL language spec. Now IDMS is pretty much obsolete, but its COBOL statement remains, as does the record-format organization of data in COBOL, despite magnetic tapes having faded into history. I would start with the original COBOL spec, and start over to re-conceptualize it to be nearly as simple as it originally was, while adding just enough so it can do anything that "modern" languages can do, and maybe a bit more to cover my own "hot buttons". What I am lacking is a talented and skeptical victim - oops I mean collaborator, to help find that delicate balance between simplicity, functionality, and express-ability in English. No programming would be required - just creative language specification skills. You would be PERFECT for this. Any interest? Steve ================== On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 2:52 AM, John Rose via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > Wow, COBOL is apparently still widely used and is object oriented now so > maybe it supports events. Who would have known... > > > > If it does the job it does the job. > > > > Wonder if it supports threads... and delegates or function pointers. > > > > I bet behind some of those locked doors in Fortune 500’s are hardcore old > school COBOL programmers saying “phhht what’s with all this world wide web > bullarkey? Totally unreliable... innernet shminnernet heh heh heh... > > > > John > > > > *From:* Steve Richfield via AGI [mailto:[email protected]] > *Subject:* Re: [agi] Event Models > > > > Has anyone here NOT had experience with event programming? > > Also, the last time I wrote COBOL, there were no events in the language. > Perhaps that dates me? > > Steve > > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac> | > Modify > <https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> > Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
