Re: [PLUG] Cobol: was Topic for North this month

[Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com>]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 09:12:52AM +0200, ac wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 20:24:52 -0400
> Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 05, 2017 at 08:07:38PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > > On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 12:12:19 -0400
> > > Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com> wrote:
> > > > We still need a speaker for North on Tuesday.  I haven't done my
> > > > COBOL and punch cards talk there yet. Any interest?  
> > > I always liked Cobol, except for the fact that every variable was a
> > > global variable, which drove me away.
> > > Did Cobol ever get local variables inside procedures or whatever
> > > their subroutines are called?  
> > Yes, but it's a little tricky because Cobol uses different terminology
> > than modern languages. Cobol's equivalent of functions or subroutines
> > are called "subprograms". Variables declared in the local-storage
> > section of the data division are dynamically allocated and initialized
> > each time the subprogram is run, much like local variables in
> > functions are.
> > Walt
> 
> ooh, i would love to see slides/docs on any COBOL talk!
> i have not used it in over a decade, so if this does go down, please
> post somewhere so that any unfortunates (like myself) who cannot
> attend, could download, please :)

I haven't put the slides online yet, mainly because I'm not sure how
much sense they make without my commentary. I'll probably give the
talk at Central eventually, but it won't be until 2018 since we're
booked up for the rest of the year.

If you just want the COBOL part of my talk, you might enjoy reading
the article I wrote for opensource.com [1]. The talk goes into a lot
more detail, especially on the history of punch cards.


Walt

1. https://opensource.com/article/17/8/what-about-cobol

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