From: William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 14:32:34 +0000
When my wife was doing a two-year computing course she had to learn COBOL. I'd never used COBOL, and when I saw it I found it close to incomprehensible.
You have to agree, though, that the *mother* of all incomprehensible programming languages has to be Assembly language.
This discussion on programming languages brings back memories!! One of the final programming exercises for my Assembler class was developing a "word processor" in Assembly code for the IBM 4361.
True, it was an interesting exercise in the sense that it helps develop logic and critical thinking skills, but giving birth to that baby was anything but a picinic. :)
In our curriculum in the university, the COBOL class was usuallly followed by Databases design, assuming you stuck with the outlined curriculum. The commercial tool of choice at the time for databases management was DBASE3+ (the good ol' days!!), followed by Foxpro. As novices, imagine our shock when we found out that <gasp> you could create a database and manipulate it in DB3+ with a couple of keystrokes. Try doing that with a mid-80's version of COBOL.
Sometimes ignorance is not bliss. ;-)
JJ
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