Hi Willem, Yes, in theory you could use any programming language on any platform, but the reality is at the moment that isn't true. Something like Visual Basic 6, for example, is 100% specific to Windows. The Visual Basic runtimes all use the Win32 API and Windows com components. So if someone really wanted to run a Visual Basic program on something like Linux or Mac they'd litterally have to write the Visual Basic Runtime libraries, compiler, etc for that platform from scratch. Hardly a realistic solution given there are already easier alternatives for those platforms like Python. I believe there are also some basic compilers out there for Mac OS and Linux which are not quite so platform specific. At the moment the only one that I can think of is KBasic for Linux, which isn't very accessible, but there are probably others I haven't heard about. Anyway, as for Cobol definitely not game programming material. When they drafted the original Cobol standard in 1959 and 1960 they pretty much decided to make it easy for anyone to read the code such as supervisors and office managers who weren't necessarily programmers. As a result the Cobol ansi standard uses a lot of English words like is, or, and, etc instead of the more common &&, ||, ==, math style syntax we see in C++, Java, and so forth.As a result it takes a lot mor coding to write anything in Cobol because you have to write it with a lot of words and even terminate a statement with a period. It is really rediculously verbose compared to most modern programming languages. Then, as I said in my prier post Cobol is pretty application specific. All of the keywords and functions are focused on keeping track of records and reports. Typical boring business related stuff. Nothing that would lend itself to game programming. Especially, since, as you pointed out, no game APIs for the language. However, that could be changing. I know one of the revisions for 2010 for Cobol is a new Cobol standard based on the Microsoft .Net API. If that is true then you would have access to the Microsoft .Net Framework as well as .Net based game APIs like SDL .Net, SFML .Net, and SlimDX. So who knows what Cobol could be like in the not too distant future.
Cheers! On 9/1/10, Willem <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Thomas and all. > > One thing I might add is that programmers use what they are comfortable > with. Things like portability and a usable sintax will influence the > decision, but in theory any language can be run on any platform. > > Cobol is an old language with a very readable sintax. It uses english words, > which complecate explaining things to the computer. Few people not in > businesses with mainframes learn it these days, because of alternatives like > java, c++ and python, which improved on the mistakes made by people a few > decades ago. > > For games, it makes no sense programming a big game in cobol, because no > sound api or functions to use the necisary devices exist. > > As for languages outputting text, aside from the format it is stored in, > some just have more functionality. All it basically does is process data and > instead of printing it to the screen, like (you are now using 80% of your > capacity) it might just create an entry in a database. Many companies have > swiched over to java, because it gives about the same amount of > functionality. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
