RE: [xml-dev] ISO and the Standards Golden Hammer (was Re: [xml-d ev] You call that a standard?)

Had jump in a little here. 
The comment about COBOL simply being embedded was a little glib.
Elegent is subjective, embedded acknowledged.
Why is there so much COBOL, maybe because it does the job it was 
designed to do.  Maybe because works?  Who knows?

Following is a fair summary of Adm. Grace Hopper's effort during 
the 50's-60's.  I was told by someone who had worked with her,
that when the Navy brass told her 'no', she responded in her own
style - overwhelming force - with three, not one, compilers:
one in French, one in English, and one in ancient Greek.

"""
Pursuing her belief that computer programs could be written in English,
Admiral Hopper moved forward with the development for Univac of the B-0
compiler, later known as FLOW-MATIC. It was designed to translate a language
that could be used for typical business task like automatic billing and
payroll calculation. Using FLOW-MATIC Admiral Hopper and her staff were able
to make the UNIVAC and If "understand" twenty statements in English. When
she recommended that an entire programming language be developed using
English words, however, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do
this because computers didn't understand English." It was three year before
her idea was finally accepted; she published her first compiler paper in
1952.

Admiral Hopper actively participated in the first meetings to formulate
specifications for a common business language. She was one of the two
technical advisers to the resulting CODA- Executive Committee, and several
of her staff were member of the CODASYL Short Range Committee to define the
basic COBOL language design. The design was greatly influenced by
FLOW-MATIC. As one member of the Short Range Committee stated, "[FLOW-MATIC]
was the only business-oriented programming language in use at the time COBOL
development started... Without FLOW-MATIC we probably never would have had a
COBOL." The first COBOL specifications appeared in 1959.

Admiral Hopper devoted much time to convincing business managers that
English language compilers such as FLOW-MATIC and COBOL were feasible. She
participated in a public demonstration by Sperry Corporation and RCA of
COBOL compilers and the machine independence they provided. After her brief
retirement from the Navy, Admiral Hopper led an effort to standardize COBOL
and to persuade the entire Navy to use this high-level computer language.
With her technical skills, she lead her team to develop useful COBOL manuals
and tools. With her speaking skills, she convinced managers that they should
learn to use them.

Another major effort in Admiral Hopper's life was the standardization of
compilers. Under her direction, the Navy developed a set of programs and
procedures for validating COBOL compilers. This concept of validation has
had widespread impact on other programming languages and organizations; it
eventually led to national and international standards and validation
facilities for most programming languages.
"""


Barry Tauber ( ) 847-267-8011 

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Marshall [mailto:] 
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 10:02 PM
To: Ken North
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] ISO and the Standards Golden Hammer (was Re: [xml-d
ev] You call that a standard?)

On Sat, 2004-05-01 at 05:34, Ken North wrote:
> > > Characters sets and coding (ASCII, OCR-A, OCR-B, MICR, bar codes)
> > > Audio and video compression (MPEG 1, 2, 4)
> > > Graphics: GKS, PHIGS, CGM, JBIG
> > > Messaging/mail: X.400
> > > Languages: C, C++, Ada, SQL, FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, Modula-2, POSIX,
CLI
> > > Storage, networking, bus interfaces: SCSI, SCSI-2, FDDI, CSMA/CD,
VMEbus,
> > > Multibus, HIPPI, RS-232/V.24 electrical
> > > Markup: SGML, RELAX NG, VRML
> > > Geocoding: ISO 19100 (19107, 19108, 19123, 19127)
> >
> > Most of these weren't ISO/ITU committees, but were either private
> > industry consortia, or other standards work that got a "finishing
> > polish."
> 
> 
> The origin of ISO standards is a mixed bag. Standards such as JPEG and
MPEG were
> created by expert groups affiliated with ISO. JPEG, for example, was
originally
> an ISO working group, then a joint group (with CCITT).
> 
> Before there was a de jure standard for C, the de facto standard was
Kernighan
> and Ritchie's book ("The C Programming Language"). You had to pay close
> attention to what compiler and features you were using as the language
evolved
> past K&R.
> 
> Newer standards have been fast-tracked from "local" standards
organizations or
> industry consortia through the ISO process. Examples include
> SQLJ (ANSI->ISO) and VRML (Web3D->ISO).
> 
> Perhaps a more interesting question is not how an ISO standard originated,
but
> what long-term impact we've seen from them:
> 
> 1. ASCII was a draft ISO standard about 40 years ago. IBM owned 70% of the
> computer market by the late 60s so EBCDIC was commonplace. The IBM user
group
> (SHARE) even opposed the adoption of ASCII in the mid-60s. Today it's hard
to
> find EBCDIC outside of the IBM mainframe world. On the other hand, ISO 646
/ ISO
> 8859 web pages are pretty common -- clear evidence of the effect a
standard can
> have for several decades.
> 
> 2. Admiral Grace Hopper and a CODASYL committee published the first spec
for
> COBOL in 1960 and it became an ANSI standard in 1968. There are two
million
> COBOL programmers today, long after Y2K is no longer on our radar screen.
One
> reason is because there are still 200 billion lines of COBOL code in
production
> applications. Most of the transaction processing code that runs every day
is
> COBOL ( processing 30 billion transactions per day).
> 
> Has COBOL persisted because it's elegant, or because it's a standard?
or it's just embedded?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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