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

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:57:35 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>"Robert" <no@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>news:morrt39o3it8im7uvpk5rlc33o6a5i69vu@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:39:05 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" 
>> <dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>There is no need for code review if an Agile approach is adopted. Code
>>>either works or it doesn't and most of what is written won't be
maintained
>>
>> What about code that makes complex decisions? How do you know its 
>> decisions are right?
>
>By the results. How else would you know whether code is right?

I know by reading the code and understanding what it says. Beyond trivial
cases, it's
impossible to test all possible inputs to a program, because the number of
combinations
grows exponentially. That's why truth tables failed. 

Say the program is testing three integers. To test every combination of
positive values,
you would need  9903520314283042199192993792 test cases. If it's testing
five alphanumeric
bytes, you would need 10000000000 test cases. 

>> How do you know what the rules for those decisions are? By talking to 
>> users? Rules must be
>> in a do***ent of some kind.
>
>Only in your world. Certainly not in mine. They can be encapsulated into
a 
>component which simply do***ents itself.

Self-do***enting code. This is where I came in.

>It gets tested and reviewd by 
>interested parties (not just the programmer who wrote it) a number of
times. 
>If you put these things into a do***ent and they change, the do***ent
needs 
>to be updated; if they are put into program code, the tool that do***ents

>the code finds the changes automatically.

Why can't you do that with Cobol or any other language?

>> Have you ever seen links in program source code?
>
>ALL the time. It is a popular and useful way of do***enting C#. I set
links 
>to my own notes, to web sites that are pertinent, to sample code on the
Web, 
>all within my own code. Sure, some of these links will fail over time,
but 
>the ones I have control over won't, and I still find it useful while I am

>learning the language. C# can also do***ent itself by means of embedded 
>links, to anchor points within the program itself.

That's the way it should be. I'm pleased to read C# people got it right.