I certainly understand your point of view. As I recall the discussion, the reason they were removed was to reduce the charge of being "verbose". There actually was a problem with the REMARKS paragraph. If the word COPY appeared in the B-margin, then it was a COPY statement. If it appeared in the A-margin, then it was a comment. (it might have been the opposite of this) This was considered error-prone. Most "modern" text editors, provide "easy" ways to create comments. The assumption is/was that "shop standards" would include documentation requirements -----Original Message----- From: John Culleton [mailto:John@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, February 06, 2015 9:10 AM To: open-cobol-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Identification Division still needed! START RANT. One of the biggest mistakes made by CODASYL and its successors is the gradual annihilation of the Identification Division. In 2015 as in 1959 programmers love to program and hate to document. The standard paragraphs in the ID regularize and encourage internal documentation. The most useful paragraph was 'REMARKS' which was the first to go. I always judged a programs quality starting with the Remarks paragraph. Today, lacking an official paragraph wise programmers create what amounts to a Remarks paragraph and highlight it by surrounding it on fours sides with asterisks. Frankly that is a lot more work then just including the standard paragraph names in the personal template. The superb manual by Gary Cutler discourages their use, even if they are included in GNU Cobol for compatibility with older programs. I would instead encourage their use. I use each paragraph for what it name says. I use the Security paragraph for my copyright statement. The mavens who create the Cobol standard made and keep making a serious mistake. We don't need to follow their folly. GMH was right and she is still right. External documentation in a ring binder gets lost when management changes or the office moves. Internal documentation is there forever. This is one of the things that make Cobol self-documenting and hence raises it above all other programming languages. If a program is moved to a less englightened Cobol environment it is little work to add some asterisks. they can even be added in advance. END RANT. -- John Culleton COBOL since 1968 Wexford Press ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ open-cobol-list mailing list open-cobol-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-cobol-list ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ open-cobol-list mailing list open-cobol-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-cobol-list
