It was developed in the 1960s. Old languages like FORTRAN and COBOL have aspects. But, languages are tools. They aren't a fashion statement.
They are tools, and some are better than others.
Now, I've written many thousands of lines of COBOL, FORTRAN, and even DIBOL in my years, but more C/C++ than that. There is no excuse for writing a NEW application in COBOL today. Neither is there an excuse for writing a new application in MUMPS. As a maintenance task, I wouldn't wish MUMPS on my worst enemy, any more than I would develop a business application in Assembler Language.
Aside from the obvious syntactical problems with MUMPS, it lacks even WEAK typing and lacks any class facility. In the 60s and 70s, we used such languages, but today, it is astonishing that anyone would.
They aren't a fashion statement, but if you think the only difference between MUMPS and Java or C++ or C# is fashion, you're [once again] talking out of your league. It is hard to imagine ANYONE making a serious commitment to a language like this today. You would really have to be a government agency to make a decision like that, I would think. |
