On 4/18/2012 11:06 PM, Dale Miller wrote:
Years ago, I learned my first programming language (FORTRAN) from an excellent
book by Daniel McCracken who was justly famous for his excellent programming
books. He was also known, (but not quite as well) for a mid-life crisis which
involved completing a degree from a seminary, but never getting ordained, if my
memory serves me. His popularity peaked around the time of the big push for
structured programming, and I attended a discussion by him of structured
programming. He was positive about it, but with a few caveats. I do remember his
saying (approximately):"Pity the poor COBOL programmer working on the error
recovery routines for Indexed-Sequential file handling, who finds himself 5
levels deep in nested PERFORMS, and is heard to shout as he sinks beneath the
waves: 'Just one GO TO!'.".
Looking at the situation where there are multiple conditions under which a
procedure/block should terminate, if one is forced to follow the stricture of a
single exit from a procedure, one is forced to choose between a convoluted set
of nested if's or using goto's to the single exit point. The use of goto's could
be considerably easier to follow, especially in the case of the original
non-structured COBOL where PERFORM's would be necessary.
Dale Miller
Well that brings back memories! I worked with Dan, back in the late
70's I think it was. I wrote the script and accompanying handouts
for is ASI video tape series on structured COBOL. Many of you
probably remember ASI and Deltak (and a few others, but these
were the big two) when large chunks of training were built around
video libraries.
When I left IBM to work for myself, I thought IBM would be my
biggest competitor. In those days, however, it was ASI and Deltak.
Over the years I ended up doing some work for both of them and
speaking at their conferences. Even did some work in London for
ASI. Good days.
--
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
303-355-2752
http://www.trainersfriend.com
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