Subject: "COBOL - the New Age Programming Language"

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:18:07 +0300

Hi all,

I've finished setting up a new page in my site:

http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/COBOL-the-New-Age-Programming-Language/

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2010 18:45:26 +1000

> http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/COBOL-the-New-Age-Programming-Language/

Hi Shlomi

There's a 4th gen language called CSP that used COBOL as its back end (you'd
generate COBOL from CSP and then compile). Where I worked they wrote in PL/1
when they needed low level access, not actual COBOL.

I don't really understand the point of the page, it's not like you'd find
people disagreeing with you or people you need to convince. The call to
action at the end of the page is really redundant if all you want to do is
make a look-at-how-stupid-people-used-to-be page, which for the most part it
is.

My opinion is that the fact that many people used it gives it some merit.
Perhaps it was the best they had or perhaps aliens in a parallel dimension
used their brain rays to make everyone think that COBOL is a great idea (and
the aliens switched to C++ after). But considering today's alternatives, if
you haven't figured out that COBOL is not the right language for your new
project, no amount of words is going to convince you otherwise.

-- Arik

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From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2010 11:57:17 +0300

On Sunday 01 August 2010 11:45:26 Arik Baratz wrote:
> There's a 4th gen language called CSP that used COBOL as its back end
> (you'd generate COBOL from CSP and then compile). Where I worked they
> wrote in PL/1 when they needed low level access, not actual COBOL.

I see.

> make a look-at-how-stupid-people-used-to-be page, which for the most part
> it is.

Well, it's just a parody page (notice the URL and the breadcrumbs trail, etc.) 
and in part I also wanted to parody the hypey pages of modern programming 
languages. For example, http://www.python.org/ had a photo of a NASA Astronaut 
saying "NASA uses Python", so I parodied it as "NASA uses COBOL" (which is 
true).

> used their brain rays to make everyone think that COBOL is a great idea
> (and the aliens switched to C++ after). But considering today's
> alternatives, if you haven't figured out that COBOL is not the right
> language for your new project, no amount of words is going to convince you
> otherwise.
> 

I did not try to convince people to ditch COBOL, just to have some fun at its 
expense.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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