Re: J4 - presentation/discussion on "Future of the COBOL Standard"

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:12:04 -0600, "Frank Swarbrick"
<Frank.Swarbrick@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>>>> On 3/9/2008 at 2:16 PM, in message
><HAXAj.5290$FE.820@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, William M.
>Klein<wmklein@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> I thought that some (many?) of those who watch CLC would be interested
in
>
>> a 
>> paper that was just put out on the J4 website.  The following are the 
>> "foils" 
>> for a Micro Focus presentation scheduled for next Wednesday, March 12. 

>> If 
>> anyone reading this newsgroup has comments that they would like
included 
>> in the 
>> discussion, you probably could still send them to the J4 chair (before 
>> Tuesday) 
>> and ask that they be included in the discussion.  You can send such 
>> comments to:
>> 
>>     bobkarlin <at> karlinskorner.com
>> 
>> and you may want to CC one of the presenters and ask for your views to 
>> be 
>> included in the discussion.  If so, CC:
>> 
>>     John.Billman <at> microfocus.com
>> 
>> The presentation foils are:
>> 
>>     08-0034 - Future of the COBOL Standard (Billman)
>> 
>> available at:
>> 
>>      http://www.cobolstandard.info/j4/files/08-0034.pdf

>
>I am perplexed by some of the things they don't think would be useful to
the
>average Cobol programmer.  Variable length fields and (dynamic capacity)
>tables are features that I personally think would be very useful! 

The average Cobol programmer has avoided Occurs Depending On for 22 years.
It's unlikely
he or she will use any-length items and dynamic-capacity tables. 

This may be a clue to Micro Focus' position:
"Some OO programming languages perform garbage collection at run time,
that is, they
automatically destroy objects that are no longer in use. OO COBOL does not
provide garbage
collection."

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