The original COBOL was an abomination, although to be fair it was intended to be short term, just until whatever the long term comittee came up with was available. PERFORM was more of a Rube Goldberg device than an assist to structured programming.
The CODASYL report was printed on soft yellow paper, and a colleague commented that it wasn't perforated. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Bob Bridges [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 2:47 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Why rip out COBOL when you can modernize key applications? - Weirdware I used to bad-mouth COBOL, and I still prefer languages that are less wordy. But I came somewhat reluctantly to see that it has its strengths. The one I think most important is that it encourages even novice programmers to organize their logic in what we used to call a "top-down" manner: This paragraph accomplish a certain task by executing paragraphs one through three, then two more, and this subparagraph executes subsubparagraphs, and so on. Forms good habits, I think. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* My life is in the hands of any fool who can make me lose my temper. -driving motto */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of scott Ford Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 12:55 I learned Assembler first and then Cobol and then some PL/1. I always felt each language had its strengths and weaknesses and all were like tools in a toolbox. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
