I saw top down and bottom up structured code ideas. And somewhere
in there was Yourdon(?) structured "method". Meanwhile I was
mostly doing ALC in those days, unless I was needed to work on
applications under CICS, then it was COBOL.
Problem was, for CICS, straight line code was best and if done
right ran faster. Of course this was all pre-COBOL-II.
Steve Thompson
On 3/29/2023 12:24 AM, David Crayford wrote:
On 28/3/23 13:56, Wayne Bickerdike wrote:
During my early training we were sent to learn Michael Jackson
structured
programming.
I had a few brief years as an applications programmer back in
the early 90s. I came from operations so I had to take the IBM
aptitude test. The interviewer held out both hands, one with an
open palm the other with a clenched fist and asked me "what
hand is the ball bearing in"?. Anyway, they shipped us all off
for a months training in rural Berkshire just outside London
for training. Very nice it was too, loads of nice quaint pubs.
We learned Jackson Structured Programming methodology before we
wrote any code. We drew org chart diagrams to design programs.
Each box had a different character in the top right such as a
asterix or a circle to determine iteration or selection. It was
decent for designing COBOL programs. I think it only ever took
of in the UK, maybe because Jackson was a Brit.
MJ quotes Dijkstra a lot, however, I didn't realise that he
was a PL/I hater. That was the first language I learned and
still think it
was a masterpiece.
The PL/I specification was ahead of its time. It was too
difficult to write a decent compiler so the guys at bell
invented C. PL/I is arguable a better language then C but it's
a niche language. IIRC, roughly 90% of mainframe applications
are written in COBOL. I only worked with PL/I briefly but it
was a breath of fresh air after COBOL. It had generic functions
and lots of really nice features such as built-in multi-tasking.
I encountered COBOL after I left IBM and it happened to
be Microfocus COBOL, a very odd variant designed for Z80/CPM
based
microcomputers. It barely did the job since it only supported
a rudimentary
ISAM file system. A couple of years later as our software
house was going
broke, I went for an interview for a DOS/VSE COBOL role. The
customer was
doubtful that my MF COBOL would translate to a mainframe role.
It didn't
prove to be a problem but oh how I wished it had been a PL/I
shop.
Inverted programs in COBOL? Blech..
On Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 4:27 PM Tony Harminc
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 at 23:22, David Crayford
<[email protected]> wrote:
I think it was flippant Edsger W. Dijkstra quote:
“The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should,
therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.”
Dijkstra wasn't hot on a lot of languages:
"If Fortran has been called an infantile disorder, PL/I must be
classified as a fatal disease."
-Edsger Dijkstra in Introduction to the Art of Computer
Programming
Which prompted, or at least provided a juicy quote for, Ric
Holt's
1972 paper "Teaching the Fatal Disease (or) Introductory
Computer
Programming Using PL/I".
I use programming languages that I don't like all the time.
C, in
particular, I dislike a lot. That doesn't mean they're not
useful.
Whew! And I thought you were a C fanatic. Thanks for
disabusing me of that.
Tony H.
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