Why cobol is called structured programming

Structured Programming C is called a structured programming language because to solve a large problem, C programming language divides the problem into smaller structural blocks each of which handles a particular responsibility. Let us go back to the time when structural support was not there in the programming languages.

Programming languages used to use goto and jump type of statements to hop between different logical units. A bigger program used to be unorganized and difficult to understand. A need for structured programming came into picture and programming languages started introducing these block structures. C structural blocks Statements and conditions Loops Functions and procedures Structured blocks examples Here is an example of Matrix addition program, which is divided into these sub procedures - input matrix, display matrix, add matrix, save result matrix to file.

Advantages C structured programming is simple and easy to understand and implement. It is well suited for small size implementation. However this is not restricted. A good design can extend it to large size implementation. Programmers do not require to know complex design concepts to start a new program. Disadvantages Data and methods and not be bind together in a module. Most other languages use symbols for many things instead of words.

Symbols make the code more compact but not as easy to understand until the symbols are learned. Both have advantages and disadvantages. It was something of a legal scam. They were receiving government funding, because there was a national shortage of programmers in Canada, and one large corporation benefited. Yes, it happens in Canada too that taxpayer money ends up diverted into the coffers of the wealthy. The podcasters reveal that New Jersey is in desperate need of COBOL programmers, because its unemployment assistance system runs on that language.

This appalls me, but I get it. The heartless, like Trump and its cronies, are rewarded with outrageous wealth, while people with functioning hearts are expected to put in their time and effort for FREE. That snap of the coding card gave me the willies. My final program happened to be a dating service based on input parameters.

I saw the creator of match. She sold match. I would love to help if there is a need. COBOL, the planet where an almost imperceptible dot at the end of a long line makes the difference between success and catastrophe.

Will they pay me enough to get out of bed and code? Dad worked for them until they were no longer Control Data. He fixed the mainframes that CDC produced.

What a flashback! Goddam…another revenue stream for old school programmers! The original version of Visual Basic not. Net VB is not a good language but got a lot of use. That makes it less compact. It uses words instead of symbols. That feature has advantages and disadvantages. COBOL has been improved. Well note that there is nowhere in their website that says they need programmers. I do not mean physically; they can process a COBOL program and understand what the program is doing and generate a completely new program that looks very different.

IBM wrote one about a quarter century ago and I know there is a competitor that had one too. I am sure that there are also language conversion programs. Also about a quarter century ago I wrote a program in COBOL that parsed manufacturing instructions written by engineers for use by engineers; people, not the computer.

It parsed out tools and materials so they can be put into another program for use by the computer. Grace Hopper wrote the first compiler ever of any language and was very involved in the design and development of COBOL.

I met her but at the time I did not know how important she was. I even stumbled into her office once in the basement of the Pentagon but she was not there. I really regret not asking her for work; I am sure she would have had some fantastic work for me. Tha kind of tools are, among other things, what is needed to do what in the s was called revers engineering, to analyze undocumented code to understand what it does. For example from a loop you can infer for every record in file X do this and that, and so on.

Being the comments a more abstract programming language. Just build a translator to the simpler language. Although I believe that it would be better to rewrite all the legacy programs in a new more concise and expressive language, structuring in a different way.

A process which may be very hard or impossible to automate from legacy software. And the common problem is that there is often no documentation of the processes that motivated the development of the programs, if it exists, it is rare that is in synchrony with the program.

The OOP is not better than structured programming, it is said that it was derived from Simula, a simulation language to model queuing systems and alike. Another antecedent is the Actor model of Carl Hewitt and team. But OO languages grew to much in complexity adding features that complicate them. The lack of simplicity is a signal that something is wrong. It is also cash-cow for the vendors of main-frames that appreciate the enormous lock-in. I spent almost thirty years using the language under three different mainframe vendors IBM, Honeywell, and Siemens and can assure you that it can be perfectly well structured.

That was a major problem right before Y2K. As we see it only takes 5 lines to write Hello World. It takes 90 lines of JCL to get it to run. But it can be done, if needed. Christian — if you have not discovered it by now: Success in coding is not about which language you code in. It is about your ability to build solutions that solve problems.

If you are not a problem solver, you can pick any language and you will not cut it. Statements like we used to write in High school to execute a certain task before going on to the computer to run it nostalgic. To those who are taking a Swipe at the language, there is a always the best tool for the job An excellent programmer knows this axiom. Every once in a while someone will write an article about how there is a desperate need for COBOL programmers.

Many large companies with huge commitments to old mainframe technology have done the math and discovered it is more cost effective to just run the mainframes rather than convert. COBOL code represents the codified requirements for a business or government. Basically the fundamental rules for the organization on some pretty important processing. Crickets indeed.

The answers….. I just say OK well good luck then. I was pretty good at it too. If someone wants to pay silly money to get me back, no problem! Different from many comments here. I do not want to judge whether it is good or bad. I just want to say it is just a programming language with its own uniqueness. I work with spring boot, angular. For me it is not about the programming language.

But it is about whether you are basically a software developer or not. If you are, the programming language is just a tool for you to express your logical thinking. Retrieving the data from the IBM iSeries box and present it out as a web.

In Chinese there is a saying, black cat or white cat, as long as the cat can catch a mouse is a good cat. As a retired Cobol programmer I can tell you that it is an excellent language. Each line is easy to learn to recruit new developers, unlike C for example. It also solved problems decades before others, like database data integrity. Well, blow me down. Unfortunately, lots of people with little or no skill write IT also. SQL is excellent for what it is designed to do. You make a great point.

It seems very easy to make lots of mistakes delete Customers; with no where clause comes to mind… if you just pick it up and try to code without actually learning the language properly. My older brother works with SQL frequently and it obviously has its uses.

After destroying hundreds of punched cards due to typos. I never wanted to use it again I am not the greatest typist and the punch card machines at school were over used. I coded it for over close to 20 years after all. Goodbye stupid green screen editor. Microfocus for Unix and hello Oracle. Then I caught the object oriented bug and went Java,. NET web apps and never looked back. Well not entirely about 5 years ago I jumped back into Microfocus but I soon realized how going back and accepted limitations with tools was not fun.

Sort of as a supplemental income. Its all or nothing. I envisioned converting tons of COBOL legacy to other architectures but to my surprise that only happened in a few contracts. I seem to recall a mainframe programmer friend of mine 25 years ago telling me the key detail was to avoid ever working on the mainframe when possible.

Of course, he also had security clearance, having served in the navy for some years. COBOL is a wonderful language if you look at it correctly. WIth the additions of so many things to COBOL since, the 90's it has become easier and more difficult to get the basics done when comparing to the more recent languages because most of the "cool" libraries are not available for COBOL. Also remember that bad developers are can write bad code in any language.

A language that allows for GOTO and PERFORM-THROUGH can be horribly misused and show the original definition of spaghetti code; couple this with a language that uses "short" lines, "hidden" periods and is vertically verbose it makes for a distressing workplace if you jump into it now with "modern" ideas on how things should be done and expectations around what an IDE should be able to do for you.

A thing to remember about the companies that need COBOL programmers now is that in many cases the code they are attempting to support is written for an older version of COBOL, which means some of the more useful constructs aren't available, hence extra cruft was needed to accomplish "simple" things. It is also common for COBOL consultants to write "bad" COBOL code so that only they can fix it; now this isn't a new thing in the consulting industry, but in a niche market like COBOL the competition can be fierce for almost non-existent contracts depending on your pricing requirements.

What is your reasoning behind it? My big success in COBOL was to have one of my suggestions included in one of the proposed standards either or the one after It was to allow file connectors to be passed as parameters.

No thanks. Companies and governments just need to replace their primordial software with something, nearly anything, written in at least a semi-modern language.

How about using a current picture of a IBM Mainframe, like their new z Where are all those promised job postings? Makes no sense.

The language is not the issue It never is for any programming by the way, since the difficulty is the custom libraries, environment frameworks. Would appreciate any ideas, about whether even I go through the udemy or other classes. What are my chances of getting a job? I have years of experience programming and tech with Linux and not afraid of green terminals :.

Wow, its been a few years and yet yet I can still read that code and tell exactly what it is doing. Given all the challenges of finding qualified people that keep popping up perhaps the focus should be on converting from COBOL to some new language for the future. The biggest challenge would be finding someone who is able to move from a procedural language to an object oriented one and yet be good at both.

My first comment ever,any blog, however this deeply touches my heart. I have worked in Java, C. I have taught VB. Net at local colleges. I have been a team lead, technical lead, and project lead. They want you to know obscure software packages that you would only know if you already worked there. Sorry to vent. Just worried about the family. How long have I been looking?

Over 1 year. Not lying. I am not sure what is your experience in Cobol because u only describe simple hello world. It very depends if Business understand what language do they need. Or maybe Cobol is only used for integration because other part of code core parts were written in Cobol. So testing is the most important We are happy to audit that code and help. There are reason why Cobol should be still maintain because there is so much logic in Cobol and no one would like to guaranty that new code will be working.

Great article. Used the END-. This article is definitely a worth reading. But later moved to Java and now working in JavaScript. I am looking forward to end my career in , so I can claim to have worked for 50 years and almost my entire career in IBM Mainframes!

To all out there, the important thing is to be doing what you like and enjoy it. Know this. Source program in symbolic language Translated by compiler Object program in machine language Compile-Time Errors n Errors detected by compiler during translation from COBOL to machine language n Detects violations of programming rules Misspelled reserved words n Missing punctuation n Errors in use of the programming language n n Also called syntax errors Execution Errors n Detected when program is run n Logic error causes incorrect output n Sequence of instructions incorrect n Wrong instruction coded n Run-time error if computer cannot execute instruction Attempt to divide by zero n Attempt to read a file that cannot be found n Debugging Techniques n Desk checking n always do this.

Can be costly to omit. Document the Program n Documentation - formal set of procedures and instructions to specify how to use program n Written for Those working with output n Computer operators who run program n Maintenance programmers who make modifications to program n In some circles called: program maintenance manual, operators manual, users manual, etc… n History of COBOL n Developed in as standard language to meet needs of business n Committee to develop language convened by Department of Defense n Included representatives from academia, business, computer manufacturers This implies the need to maintenance as requirements change and errors are discovered.

Year Problem Y 2 K n Year stored as two digits in older programs to save space n 19 assumed as valid prefix for all years n 95 represented year n Invalid as prefix for years and beyond n 00 could mean or Improving Program Design Two techniques used to develop programs that are easier to understand, test, debug and modify n Structured Programming n Top-Down Programming