Next-generation mask metrology tool

Schlueter, Gerhard W.B.; Roeth, Klaus-Dieter; Blaesing-Bangert, Carola; Ferber, M.

doi:10.1117/12.476920

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…4GLs ("Fourth Generation Languages") were highly praised in the 1960s through 1980s [47,63] for being non-procedural high level specification languages that allow software developers to write concise yet readable code that is easier to design, develop, evolve and maintain. Their implementers were mostly focusing on the conciseness of the code that had to be written, often overlooking other DSL design principles that are valued today (developer efficiency, learnability, tool support, debuggability, etc).…”

Section: Inspirational Languages Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Software language engineers’ worst nightmare

Zaytsev

2020

Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering

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Many techniques in software language engineering get their first validation by being prototyped to work on one particular language such as Java, Scala, Scheme, or ML, or a subset of such a language. Claims of their generalisability, as well as discussion on potential threats to their external validity, are often based on authors' ad hoc understanding of the world outside their usual comfort zone. To facilitate and simplify such discussions by providing a solid measurable ground, we propose a language called BabyCobol, which was specifically designed to contain features that turn processing legacy programming languages such as COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, REXX, CLIST, and 4GLs (fourth generation languages), into such a challenge. The language is minimal by design so that it can help to quickly find weaknesses in frameworks making them inapplicable to dealing with legacy software. However, applying new techniques of software language engineering and reverse engineering to such a small language will not be too tedious and overwhelming. BabyCobol was designed in collaboration with industrial compiler developers by systematically traversing features of several second, third and fourth generation languages to identify the core culprits in making development of compiler for legacy languages difficult.

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Section: Inspirational Languages Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Software language engineers’ worst nightmare

Zaytsev

2020

Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering

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“…When COBOL was first introduced and published in 1960 [6], it enabled writing software that replaced the manual labour of thousands of people previously performing pen-and-paper bookkeeping or at best manual data entry and manipulation. When 4GLs (fourth generation languages) started emerging, they allowed developers to write significantly shorter programs, and enabled automated generation of dozens of pages of COBOL code from a single statement [22,29]. Nowadays, in the era of intentionally designed software languages [18] and domain-specific languages [31], conciseness and brevity is appreciated as much as readability, testability, understandability and ultimately, maintainability [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving a Software Modernisation Process by Differencing Migration Logs

Deknop

Fabry²,

Mens

et al. 2020

Product-Focused Software Process Improvement

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Software written in legacy programming languages is notoriously ubiquitous and often comprises business-critical portions of codebases and portfolios. Some of these languages, like COBOL, mature, grow, and acquire modern tooling that makes maintenance activities more bearable. Others, like many fourth generation languages (4GLs), stagnate and become obsolete and unmaintained, which first urges and eventually forces migrating to other languages, if the software needs to be kept in production. In this paper, we dissect a software modernisation process endorsed by Raincode Labs, utilised in particular to migrate software from a 4GL called PACBASE, to pure COBOL. Having migrated upwards of 500 MLOC of production code to COBOL using this process, the company has ample experience with this process. Nevertheless, we identify some improvement points and explain the technical side of a possible solution, based on migration log differencing, that is currently being put to the test by Raincode migration engineers.

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