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Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

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Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#31

Post by xvilka »

KTSnowy wrote: post #24
xvilka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not improving Gnu COBOL[1] then? It has better support for the COBOL constructs and libraries already. [1] https://gnucobol.sourceforge.io/

I know about GnuCOBOL, but both projects have different goals and ideals. Otterkit compiles to C#, and GnuCOBOL compiles to C. The two are meant for different use cases. You wouldn't use a huge C program in a .NET backend, it would be a pain to make it work correctly and difficult to maintain. GnuCOBOL also doesn't support quite a bit of COBOL's features. It only supports the procedural part of the language, and that…

Thanks for the answer. Looking forward for your project success!

Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#32

Post by gymbeaux »

On one side you have companies like Google creating entirely new programming languages (Carbon) that aren’t really solving a problem and aren’t that different from one or more existing languages (Rust, Go), and on the other you have people like OP writing a COBOL compiler in C#. What a world.

Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#34

Post by jay-barronville »

gymbeaux wrote: post #32

On one side you have companies like Google creating entirely new programming languages (Carbon) that aren’t really solving a problem and aren’t that different from one or more existing languages (Rust, Go), and on the other you have people like OP writing a COBOL compiler in C#. What a world.

Lol. This is why I love HN though!

Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#35

Post by zdimension »

jiggawatts wrote: post #27

This reminded me of the IKVM project: https://github.com/ikvm-revived/ikvm This is a converter that allows Java bytecode to run on the .NET Framework. It allows horrific, unnatural things such as a C# class that is a derived type of a Java class!

Seeing code like that reminds me a lot of the J# days, when you basically had a Java 1.1 standard library implemented on top of .NET. I played with it a bit a few years back, even ported an AWT to it (imagine using AWT in C#): https://github.com/zdimension/awt2048_csharp/blob/master/Pro...

Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#36

Post by pjmlp »

gymbeaux wrote: post #32

On one side you have companies like Google creating entirely new programming languages (Carbon) that aren’t really solving a problem and aren’t that different from one or more existing languages (Rust, Go), and on the other you have people like OP writing a COBOL compiler in C#. What a world.

Carbon solves one problem, ISO doesn't care about what Google thinks regarding ABI break.

Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#38

Post by gymbeaux »

pjmlp wrote: post #36
gymbeaux wrote: post #32

On one side you have companies like Google creating entirely new programming languages (Carbon) that aren’t really solving a problem and aren’t that different from one or more existing languages (Rust, Go), and on the other you have people like OP writing a COBOL compiler in C#. What a world.

Carbon solves one problem, ISO doesn't care about what Google thinks regarding ABI break.

Carbon is incredibly niche. I can't imagine anyone is using it for greenfield stuff. The idea that I can refactor my code base one class or even one method at a time is neat, but if I am the guy in the C-Suite dropping $10M+ each year on SWE salaries, I would rather wait for C++25 or rewrite my codebase in something "mainstream" like Rust than spend man-hours rewriting C++ in a baby programming language- created and maintained by Google of all companies.

Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#39

Post by KTSnowy »

m1sta_ wrote: post #37

I can see a lot of people asking about intended use cases here. I can imagine this as part of a toolchain for making legacy COBOL code 'serverless'. There's a lot of value in that.

Yes, exactly. Specially when paired with dotnet NativeAOT when deploying to a serverless service, could save a bit on server costs.

Re: Show HN: Otterkit – COBOL compiler for .NET

#40

Post by tomcam »

TowerTall wrote: post #18
tomcam wrote: post #16

So glad they remembered to support these widely known trademarks: “FLOW-MATIC® (trademark of Sperry Rand Corporation), Programming for the 'UNIVAC® I and II”. My friends and I in /r/univac can’t stand it when the trademarks are dissed. One the mods banned a guy for using Eniac instead of ENIAC and we all thought the 18-month ban was way too light, but the new guard just doesn’t care like we do. Seriously I upvoted an…

I not sure I understand. Did someone get banned for 18 month because he used lowercase instead of uppercase?

I was making gentle fun about continuing to defend the what I would guess are long-dead trademarks
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