[Sussex] On the Other hand

Gareth Ablett garethablett at phpw.fsnet.co.uk
Thu Nov 21 20:32:01 UTC 2002


Geoff wrote:
-------------
> There are a lot of people out there who love COBOL still so be careful
what
> you say you scampish young whipper-snapper ;)

He he :)

> THe number of people here who've lectured me about how they were real
> programmers because they used to program in COBOL... *sigh*

noted and i know how the world thinks of Cobol it was jus me doing a IMHO
mode.

> The thing is, in the business world at least, 90% of programming is all
the
> same - connect to a database, do a few updates / queries and then maybe
> write some import/export routines and the odd report - frankly it sucks.

true alas what can you do with out some sort of file/data storage with a
program.

> As languages for doing this kind of work go, your best bet in terms of
speed
> of development are simple 4GL tools.  Unfortunately 4GL tools commonly
> (historically) lack some features that business developers need, and as
> companies seem to like to minimise the number of languages they are
actively
> using it often happens that VB is now the language of choice. Of course it
> is also the simplest language that Microsoft offer - which is a major
factor
> for your average manager - BTW, I found a chart of management types at my
> local vets surgery.. interesting to see that the most popular type of
> manager in the world is the "Romney Marsh"...baaaaaa...

> COBOL is at least reasonably simple - VB is far too complex a beast for
90%
> of the work it is used for (and for 90% of people using it).  Trouble is,
> you get a lot of complexity without all the power of a language like
Delphi
> (Object Pascal).  Frankly I think a language like Python or Ruby could
> handle everything VB has to do in the window's environment and do it far
> more elegantly.  Dammit, Java is a cleaner language than VB, less open to
> crapness and easier to read...


> ok... rant mode off...

Rant mode back on :)...

when I was being more of a young wipper snapper at the programming stuff. I
was
a big fan of Pascal and Delphi as it was a simple language and allowed me to
create
any application for windows that I so wished but alas this stoped with my
choice of
Operating system. I was waiting ages for the release of Kylix but but to my
disapointment it was more based on the C++ Builder coding platform rather
then the
Pascal coded Delphi. but if there was a sort of delphi for Linux I would
have
created a long list of desktop application by now (pity).

even now I do most of my coding with PHP and other webbased languages that
for would
be the fasted and most versitile way of creating a system for database
access as it
can be choped and chaneged soo easily, yet i know that it has it short
commings for
a lot of uses because of security and stuff. but then most programs can be
decompiled
these days aswell.

In the words of Geoff 'ok... rant mode off...'

Gareth Ablett


=================================================================

The above information is confidential to the addressee and may be
privileged.  Unauthorised access and use is prohibited.

Internet communications are not secure and therefore this Body
does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this
message.

If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying,
distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. unlawful.





More information about the Sussex mailing list