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

"William M. Klein" <wmklein@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:dDzBj.440419>
> [progams]  that require ODO's, what he has stated does apply in some 
> environments, but requires a use of "average" that is not universally 
> used.

Occurs Depending On is a perfectly fine and potentially quite useful 
source-code level technique.

But it's like all other techniques: there are times to use it and times to

use something else.

Trying to quantify the techniques used by the "average" programmer is a 
fool's errand. Example?

One time I was bought in as an outside contractor to work on a very
specific 
piece of software with which I had prior experience. The person
supervising 
my work had been the primary COBOL programmer for the client for nine (9) 
years.

When I pronounced the job done, quite reasonably this supervisor wanted to

check out my coding techinques before she let me go.

Imagine my surprise when this nine-year veteran told me not only was my
code 
acceptable, but she was glad to have had the chance to review it because
she 
had NEVER SEEN THE 'SEARCH' VERB USED BEFORE.

That was the day I quit making *any* assumptions about "normal" or
"average" 
programming techniques.

-- 
Michael C. Mattias
Tal Systems Inc.
Racine WI
mmattias@[EMAIL PROTECTED]