I believe that the problems are:
1. Some people conflate the language and
those who use it.
2. Some people believe that those who
use the language are interchangeable.
3. Some people think of COBOL as not
having changed since CODASYL.
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Bob
Bridges <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2023 9:44 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Stop the ragging on COBOL please [was: RE: ASM call by value]
Peter! I don't think I've heard from you recently; maybe I just wasn't paying
attention until I read this one.
I myself dislike COBOL for the very simple and personal reason that it's so
WORDY. But even when I had to use it a lot (I was a COBOL developer for about
15 years), I was aware that it's a powerful language with good organizational
features for what we used to call top-down programming, and I enjoy sneering (a
nasty, superior smirk) at claims that it's a dinosaur and will soon die an
unmourned death as other languages supplant it. Not gonna happen, not in my
lifetime anyway. Maybe in the Millennium, though I'm doubtful.
Not true, though, that it's "not acceptable" to rag on COBOL. Obviously it is.
Don't waste your time and energy taking offense; we haven't enough of either
to throw about to no benefit.
---
Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313
/* When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food
and clothes. -Erasmus */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Farley, Peter
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2023 01:56
I am getting increasingly tired of snide or outright dismissive references to
COBOL and by extension to COBOL programmers.
Programmers like me.
Yes, I am also well versed in HLASM, Rexx, awk and gawk, somewhat facile in
SORT (at least as far as knowing and using JOIN's), SQL, JCL and various other
z/OS utilities, MetalC, and lately python and bash scripting. I even remember
some of the PL/I and Fortran and Pascal I used in college and my early
employment days. I even remember some SNOBOL, which I actually got to use
productively at a then-major NY bank very early in my career.
COBOL pays my bills and keeps my employer operating successfully and profitably.
COBOL does NOT rot the brain. Alcohol and various other legal and illegal
substances can, in fact, do that. Intelligently devising business solutions to
business problems in ANY computer language does NOT rot the brain.
It is not funny or acceptable to say so. It never was.
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