I think a harder conceptual difference isn't between programming languages, but it is between having most everything in one place and most everything spread out and used by everyone.
Tracing down anomalies, changing testing standards, changing reliability standards, etc. can be harder than actually coding. We have a far higher percentage of IS professionals working behind the scenes and a far smaller percentage of IS professionals creating the applications that the users actually see. There's more systems type work - that often seem to get in the way of getting the application working. It's necessary stuff. For instance, security needs are much harder to implement when users might be in Starbucks anywhere in the world instead of in the office across from the mainframe. Automated testing tests code, but not so much whether we are actually giving the proper data to the proper people. But what choice do we have? We have to assume that components work correctly in much the same way that CoBOL programmers assume COMPUTE works correctly (We can't afford to change a component nor the way COMPUTE works when so many applications are expecting them to work the way they work now). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
