Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Tar -> BSD -> Unix wars -> SCO vs IBM -> Trade secret -> Trade dress ->
> Honeywell -> Burroughs Corporation
>
> -> Stack machine -> Accumulator machine -> Register machine -> Counter
> machine -> Pointer machine -> Random access machine -> Random access
> stored program machine
>
> -> FORTRAN
>     -> Arithmetic IF
>     -> Front panel
>     -> Modula-2 -> Oberon -> F
>
> -> ALGOL
>     -> P-code machine -> UCSD Pascal -> Ada
>     -> Lisp machine
>     -> Whetstone
>
> -> COBOL
>
> Like, TOTALLY RETRO, man!
>
> I'm really loving this quote:
>
> "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
> regarded as a criminal offense." (Dijkstra)
>
> Seeing the 8-line Hello World implementation, I'm tending to agree...
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

There are days that I tend to agree with that too.  Though I am not a COBOL
programmer, I am tech support for a medium size mainframe operating system, and
have to deal with a programming staff of COBOL programmers.  When a select few
of them have problems, and its always the same select few, I have to help them
debug their programs.  Though we have some very sharp people working here, there
are some I don't know how they find their way to work every morning.

As an aside, have you ever looked at PL/I.  My second programming job was at a
PL/I shop.  It has some nice features, but also some strange idiosyncrasies.
As the wikipedia entry on PL/I points out, there are no reserved keywords in
the language, thus you can have variable names like IF, THEN or ELSE etc. Sot
the following statement is perfectly valid:

IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE; ELSE ELSE = IF;

This can lead to some very difficult debugging.

Isaac

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