EXPERT RESPONSE
In the Unix/Linux environment (which is the scope of this discussion), COBOL
is a very rare bird -- almost universally unknown. C is the dominant
programming language, and the semantics of the C programming language are
almost universal throughout the OS and application development environment.
Both languages support structured records in RAM and on disk, and
structured, modular logic -- and a full C development environment is already
present in every Linux system at no extra cost, so it's no more difficult
for a competent programmer to write a business application in C than it is
to write the same application in COBOL. Good program logic and data
structure design are necessary for both languages; it's only a discussion of
how the logic and data structures are expressed. It's interesting that one
of the best business programming books I've ever seen has all the examples
implemented entirely in GW-BASIC...8-).
All the COBOL compilers and tools available on Linux (specifically on
zSeries and on Linux in general) are commercial applications. They are
*very* expensive to acquire, and are difficult to integrate -- special
libraries, different runtime requirements, non-standard calling conventions,
etc. So, while I don't have any objections to COBOL per se (I've written a
few zillion lines of the stuff myself), it's simply not present in most
Linux environments, and the cost of supporting COBOL applications in the
Linux environment is prohibitive compared to supporting the same application
written in C, both from a configuration/operations perspective, and from a
tooling acquisition perspective.
The point I was making: for Linux, supporting COBOL on Linux is most likely
to be a transition strategy; it is highly unlikely to be the final
destination.
If someone feels like finishing the GNU COBOL compiler project and gets it
incorporated into the distributions, my opinion might change. Until then,
COBOL is simply unlikely to make any headway in the Linux environment.
Why would you use 'C' instead of COBOL to produce reports?
It costs nothing additional to develop and use C applications on Linux, and
the entire environment is oriented toward supporting C applications in an
efficient and natural manner. It costs a substantial amount to support COBOL
on Linux. See above for discussion of language features, etc. Nothing in the
Linux environment *prevents* use of COBOL; the observation is that COBOL is
rarely selected in that environment for purely economic reasons.
Wrt to reports, in the Linux world, it would be much more likely that report
programs would be written in Perl or Python than C. Both have sophisticated
text manipulation capabilities not easily implemented in C or COBOL, and (at
least in the case of Perl), there is a enormous library of functions
available for any concievable need that are available for public re-use with
no license attached. Taking advantage of these freely-available modules
makes the case for developing a compiled application in either C or COBOL
suspect -- it's just way too much easier to write applications like that in
Perl. Perl's interface to SQL-based DBMS systems is also almost trivial to
use (much simpler than either the C or COBOL model), and as these COBOL
reporting applications typically also move the data to some kind of DBMS,
that's further argument for making it happen with Perl instead of compiled
stuff.
It's not a discussion about whether C is better than COBOL. It's a business
decision that in a Linux environment, I can get more working applications
per hour for less expensive resources and requirements from C or Perl than
COBOL. Given that, most organizations choose C or Perl over COBOL for new
development on Linux.
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