I would, in general, not compare any programming language to any natural language. The evolution of natural languages was driven by the types of challenges we faced over the millenia, and those did not require expressing algorithms and data structures. COBOL may be a terrible language, but it is much better than English for, e.g., describing a record layout.
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Bill Ogden [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, January 8, 2022 11:52 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ... Re: Top 8 Reasons for using Python instead of REXX for z/OS Before saying something like "COBOL is terrible compared to the English language" try studying a remote analysis of common, everyday English sentences --- the study based on a wholly different language base. The order of words in English, and the exact meaning of the order in a particular sentence situation, can be complex and writing a "syntax definition" for how English "must" be written --- again based on a very different language and cultural set --- can be very very difficult. My computer uses go back to 1966 (1620, 1410, 1401, 7040, 7090/94 before going to S/360) and I installed OS/360 Release 1 (after attending a two-week TSS session!). And, I am not a COBOL programmer! (Except for a bit of Fortran and PL/1, a long long time ago, I think in assembly language.) Some of the early COBOL programs I saw were fairly readable -- even to someone with only a bit of data handling experience. Possibly this was due to the early nature of COBOL programmers and to the rather small and simple (in modern terms) COBOL programs involved. Over the years we have all seen an almost countless number of "new, modern, super, will-replace-everything" languages. Very few maintained upward compatibility as their basic implementation shifted and not many have survived as the "new, modern, super, will-replace-everything" language of today. Interesting discussion! Bill ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
