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 Off-Topic / Geek / 234
    Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat
   (...) "What The--?! Why don't we use words we already know?" And thus the evil in Grace Hopper begat COBOL. ... Can you imagine the spelling errors that would pop up in code if programming languages were spoken? :-, Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman
   (...) Hey, don't be dissin' COBOL for that :-( It served a purpose in its time (~40 years ago) and it's not COBOL's fault that it's still being used. (...) LOL! (OTOH, I've written 'printf' a couple of times when I'd meant to write 'print' :-) (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat
   (...) I have to admit, I'm something of an anti-COBOL bigot. That has obviously clouded my judgement, but I can't see what COBOL could do that FORTRAN wasn't already doing more cleanly and efficiently, on the same platforms. Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman
     (...) Well, hey, aren't we all -- and as well we should all be (IMHO) in 1999, especially with all this Double-Byte COBOL, OO-COBOL, and COBOL-Java stuff going on as perverse attempts to keep COBOL alive and milking the Y2K cash cow. But I thought (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
    
         Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat
     (...) Oy vey, der camps. I alvays vorget der camps. Und der suits und der schlide-rules and der schtuff. (...) Wasn't COBOL started in 1959? By the time COBOL was developed, my dad (1) was writing FORTRAN compilers for whatever platform he needed (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
    
         Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Todd Lehman
      (...) I think that's when it was first released, right? Hopper began working on it much earlier than that, yes? 1955 was what I read somewhere a couple hours ago. (...) Hey cool -- so you're a second-gen too? We'll have to invent a secret handshake. (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
    
         Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jeremy H. Sproat
     (...) Heh heh heh. What was your parental-unit (1) coding? My dad was basically a civvie contractor for the Army for a good chunk of his career, writing software for calibrating RADAR and RADOT hardware, though he did work at the Hanford Nuclear (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Steve Bliss
     (...) I don't know the original specs for either language, but I *think* COBOL's data-description capabilities were much richer than FORTRAN's. Steve (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Larry Pieniazek
     (...) job security baby. Hey, did you hear about the new Object Oriented COBOL? It's true. They've come up with a name for it! ADD 1 TO COBOL. (25 years ago, 16-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Jasper Janssen
   (...) FORTRAN in the same sentence as clean and efficient, without a negative. *shakes head* must be a misparse. Jasper (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!) —Larry Pieniazek
   (...) It's a relative thing. Back then, Algol 60 hadn't even been developed, and FORTRAN hadn't been muddied up with more stuff. (why, I remember when I had to do my programs on punched cards... once you punch it. there's NO undo!... and I had to (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
   
        "Why, in my day..." —Todd Lehman
   (...) Heh heh, I think I remember hearing about someone who took a precision knife to a punched and changed a D into an E by altering the lowest order bit. IIRC, punched cards were easier to do that sort of thing to than paper tape because punched (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
 

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