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This paper is an interesting excursion into programming language archeology, a retrospective of a
problem that the Y2K people faced,
the 500 language problem,
namely the reality that you have to
write parsers for the 500 to 700 different
languages that exist in the world before
you can do semantic transformations on them.
Cobol which accounts for 30% of the software
in the world is almost a 500 language problem in itself:
If everyone were using Cobol and only a
few systems were written in uncommon
languages, the 500-Language Problem
would not be important. So, knowing the
actual language distribution of installed
software is useful. First, there are about
300 Cobol dialects, and each compiler
product has a few versions—with many
patch levels. Also, Cobol often contains
embedded languages such as DMS, DML,
CICS, and SQL. So there is no such thing as
"the Cobol language." It is a polyglot, a
confusing mixture of dialects and embedded
languages—a 500-Language Problem
of its own.
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Posted to history by jon fernquest on 7/27/02; 2:56:05 AM
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Cracking the 500-Language Problem
