With the clever use of GOTOs and the use of different variables with
strange names
for the same purpose, you can even turn a less than 1000 lines COBOL
program completely unreadable.
I see such programs almost every day.
The biggest obstacle for keeping large COBOL programs maintainable is
the lack of procedures and local variables, IMO.
Because all variables are global, it is almost impossible to structure
your program into many small independent and
separate blocks, which IMO is crucial when it comes to fighting
complexity. You need much discipline and talent,
inspired by other programming languages (in my case PL/1 - Pascal - C -
Assembler, to name a few), if you want to produce
good quality software in a shop who is COBOL only :-(
I'm doing this for more than 3 years now ... new COBOL software every
day. COBOL is not dead and will not be
for the next 10 to 20 years, at least.
Kind regards
Bernd
Am 28.03.2023 um 17:05 schrieb David Spiegel:
Hi Bill,
You said: "...It seems to help with maintenance and updating of large,
complex commercial programs..."
Back in the mid-'80s, I used to support a 3-letter software vendor's
Payroll package.
The source was unreadable because of the amount and size of copybooks.
When compiled, the listing was so big that it was near impossible to
follow.
Needless to say, the variable and paragraph names didn't help too much.
Have you ever tried reading a DMS for CICS (again, 40 years ago)
generated COBOL listing?
My point is that anything can be unreadable, including wordy COBOL.
I used to code FORTRAN, ASSEMBLER and APL for a living (early '80s).
These 3 can be readable if there are departmental standards in place.
Caveat: I still program Rexx and given the chance would (and have)
program(med) PL/I -- my favourite compiled language.
(Edsger W. Dijkstra be damned. (If he had to work in a commercial (aka
"real") environment (instead of his ivory tower), his opinion might've
been tempered a bit.) )
Regards,
David
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