26 Dec
2012
26 Dec
'12
12:32 p.m.
On 12/26/2012 12:05 PM, George Currie wrote:
All "financial code" is not the same. The
stuff that tracks your
checking account is not the same (in requirements) as the stuff that
high frequency traders use (some of the examples of major issue wrought
by "poorly" written software fall into the latter category). Cobol
would be significantly out of place in an environment where microseconds
make a difference.
Uh-huh, in the perversion called HFT where a share of stock is owned on
the average for a period of what, 2 seconds? That is laughingly called
"investment"? HFT would probably disappear if a per-share trading tax
were imposed--right now, it only exists because trades and back-outs can
be done for free. There could be worse things in this world were HFT to
suddenly go away.
That being said, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with COBOL--but
little effort is being spent on writing good compilers for it. After
all, it's just a programming language.
--Chuck