Re: [Tiny-cobol-users] ACCEPT etc. WAS Segmentation Fault

[Binyamin D. <bd...@di...>]

On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 14:51:12 -0500 David Essex <de...@us...>
wrote:

:>John Culleton wrote:

:>>  David Essex wrote:

:>>> I can assume you have encountered the '66 level ALTER statement'
:> >> merry go round. Code who's real purpose was to ensure job
:> >> security.
 
:>> There was the contract programmer who ensured job security by a) sucking up to 
:>> the IBM SE and b) using fields called x1, x2 etc. as counters, later as 
:>> indexes, and then as accumulators for storing numeric data, all in the same 
:>> program.  He was of course fond of ALTER. 

:>Have you ever heard the story about some COBOL programmers employed in 
:>the financial sector.

:>Apparently these COBOL programmers had written some mission critical 
:>applications. They used so many 66 levels and ALTER statements, that it 
:>made very difficult for any else to understand the code.

:>Of course they used this code to ensure job security and what they 
:>considered a GOOD salary.

Depends when it was done.

Back in Ye Olde Days, not only would it have been ridiculous to use 3M for a
simple Hello World program, one could not even guarantee 100K being available
(including buffers).

While overlays and ALTERS are most unstructured, they do allow for faster and
smaller code.

So if this code was written in the 90s, yes, there is something wrong.

If this code was written in the 70s, good code. And much more maintainable (by
the average programmer) than assembler.

--
Binyamin Dissen <bd...@di...>
http://www.dissensoftware.com

Director, Dissen Software, Bar & Grill - Israel


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