TITLE: BASIC and COBOL Cross My Path
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: June 13, 2007  4:05 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I don't run into Basic and Cobol all that often these days,
but lately they seem to pop up all over.  Once recently I
even ran into them together in an
<A HREF="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/06/04/Languages">
   article by Tim Bray</A>
on trends in programming language publishing:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Are there any here that might go away?  The only one that
feels threatened at all is VB, wounded perhaps fatally in
the ungraceful transition to .NET.  I suppose it's unlikely
that many people would pick VB for significant new applications.
Perhaps it's the closest to being this millennium's COBOL;
still being used a whole lot, but not creatively.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Those are harsh words, but I suppose it's true that Cobol is
no longer used "creatively".  But we still receive huge call
for Cobol instruction from industry, both companies that
typically recruit our students and companies in the larger
region -- Minneapolis, Kansas City, etc. -- who have learned
that we have a Cobol course
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/courses.php">
   on the books</A>.
Even with industry involvement, there is effectively no student
demand for the course.  Whether VB is traveling the same path,
I don't know.  Right now, there is still decent demand for VB
from students and industry.

Yesterday, I ran into both languages again, in a cool way...
A reader and former student pointed out that I had "hit the
big leagues" when my
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2007-06.html#e2007-06-11T16_31_13.htm">
   recent post on Alan Kay</A>
started scoring points at
<A HREF="http://programming.reddit.com/">
   programming.reddit.com</A>.
When I went there for a vanity stroke, I ran into something
even better, a
<A HREF="http://homepage.mac.com/bprice1949/sudokucobol.html">
   Sudoku solver written in Cobol</A>!
Programmers are a rare and wonderful breed.  Thanks to Bill
Price for sharing it with us. [1]

While looking for a Cobol compiler for my Intel Mac [2], I
ran instead into
<A HREF="http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/">
   Chipmunk Basic</A>,
"an old-fashioned Basic interpreter" for Mac OS.  This brings
back great memories, especially in light of my upcoming 25th
high school reunion.  (I learned Basic as a junior, in the
fall of 1980.)  Chipmunk Basic doesn't seem to handle my old
graphics-enabled programs, but it runs most of the programs my
students wrote back in the early 1990s.  Nice.

I've been considering a Basic-like language as a possible
source language for my compiler students this fall.  I first
began having such thoughts when I read a special section on
lightweight languages in a 2005 issue of
<A HREF="http://www.ddj.com/">
   Dr. Dobbs' Journal</A>
and found Tom Pitman's article
<A HREF="http://www.ddj.com/dept/lightlang/184406381">
   The Return of Tiny Basic</A>.
Basic has certain limitations for teaching compilers, but
it would be simple enough to tackle in full within a semester.
It might also be nice for historical reasons, to expose
today's students to something that opened the door to so many
CS students for so many years.

----

[1]  I spent a few minutes poking around Mr. Price's website.
In some sort of cosmic coincidence, it seems that Mr. Price is
took his undergraduate degree at the university where I teach
(he's an Iowa native), and is an avid chessplayer -- not to
mention a computer programmer!  That's a lot of intersection
with my life.

[2] I couldn't find a binary for a Mac OS X Cobol, only sources
for
<A HREF="http://www.opencobol.org/">
   OpenCOBOL</A>.
Building this requires building some extension packages that
don't compile without a bunch of tinkering, and I ran out of
time.  If anyone knows of a decent binary package somewhere,
please
<A HREF="mailto:wallingf@cs.uni.edu">
   drop me a line</A>.
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