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From: Richard on 31 Mar 2008 15:10
On Mar 31, 1:44 pm, Robert <n...(a)e.mail> wrote:
>
> Efficient is Cobolese for fast. In the Good Old Days we had to hold the machine's hand,
> showing it how to go fast. Concern for speed became THE criteria driving design.

No. Often saving space was just as big a concern. Fitting the client's
product and customer files onto one 4 MegaByte disk drive was as
important as having the daily invoice run take less than 24 hours.

> As
> machines got faster, we kept doing it out of habit and because no one told us to stop. We
> now program as though the year is still 1973,

Who are the 'we' that you speak of ? Are you making another of your
infamous 'universal truths' about 'all Cobol programmers', or is it
just yourself that is a 'royal wee'.


> ignoring the fact that the Pentium 4 on our
> desktop is 2,000 times the speed of a 370/158.

Well, it does seem that you were alone in wanting to save a few
nanoseconds on SEARCH ALL. You previously wanted to convince others to
use pointer based lists because you claimed they were faster than
tables (when my testing showed them not to be).

It may well be that you program "as though the year is still 1973",
but others may not be doing so.

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