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Posted by Tony Marston on 12/17/46 11:54
"Shelly" <sheldonlg.news@asap-consult.com> wrote in message
news:7BGzg.6578$gF6.716@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
> "Tony Marston" <tony@NOSPAM.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:ean53d$rlk$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk...
>> Case sensitivity can lead to unmaintainable code. For example, if there
>> is a variable called $foo I expect $Foo and $FOO to mean the same thing,
>> not different things. The fact that they are not can lead to unexpected
>> results.
>
> You just said it here right now. It can lead to unexpected results
> ....for YOU....because ...YOU...expect them to be the same when, in fact,
> they are different thingsp
And so does everybody else with a background in case insensitive languages.
>> Programmers who deliberately create different variables with the same
>> name but different case are bad programmers, but a *proper* language
>> (such as COBOL) removes the possibility for such bad programming by
>> ignoring case and treating all the variables as a single variable. Any
>> language which
>
> IMO COBOL is the worst language I have ever seen. I have not programmed
> in that language for almost thirty years. At that time it treated all
> variables as globals -- talk about you UNMAINTAINABLE code!!!!
It is possible to write mantainable code in COBOL just as it is possibe to
write unmaintable code in Java. It is the programer and not the language
which is the deciding factor.
> (I think they changed that somehow, but am not sure). If you happened to
> use the same name in two different (were the "subroutines" called
> paragraphs or procedures? -- I forget), then a change in one changed the
> value in the other -- and that was not convention; it was the language
> itself. Ugh and double-ugh!!!
That is not the case as I remember it. Each subprogram has its own working
storage section, so anything declared in one subprogram cannot possibly
affect anything in another subprogram. It is only when you get to shared
storage areas, such as common storage or the linkage section, that you may
have problems. Yet agin, as COBOL is a compiled language, anything which is
actually declared more than once can be flagged as an error at compile time,
so the problem is easily spotted and fixed.
>> deliberately allows programmers to wrte unmaintainable code is a bad
>
> Oh, I'll totally agree with that statement. That is why COBOL (at least
> circa 1975) royally sucked wind.
I agree. COBOL 85 was much, much better.
>> language. After all, that is why most modern languages do not include
>> GOTO because f the problems it can cause.
>
> Uh, in fact that is not correct. Java, C, C++ and any other I can think
> of all allow the goto. It is just that good programmers don't use it.
> What do we call that now? I think the word "convention" comes to mind.
Programmer conventions are still not the same as language rules, and I
dislike the idea of certain conventions in some languages being promoted to
rules in other languages.
--
Tony Marston
http://www.tonymarston.net
http://www.radicore.org
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