On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 09:18, Ron Johnson wrote: > On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 08:36, Mark Roach wrote: > > On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 08:52, Ron Johnson wrote: > > > On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 03:35, Alex Malinovich wrote: > > > > I've, unfortunately, been forced into taking a COBOL class as a > > > > requirement for getting my BS. (And that's just what it is, a load of > > > > BS...) What's worse is that I can't seem to find any Free COBOL tools. > > [snip] > > > Too bad you have such a negative view of COBOL. In the hands of > > > someone with a brain, it's quite a powerful and modular language. > > > > That's a bit harsh, Ron. He said he was forced into taking the class, > > not that COBOL sucked. And even if he had, no need to get your hackles > > up. > > I believe his quote was "And that's just what it is, a load of BS." > He's a student, and, by definition, has a limited perspective, and > probably, but not definitely, thinks he knows everything. That's > _not_a_criticism_, just a statement of life. After all, how many > young people think they know more than their parents until they hit > 30? The "BS" part of it was intended towards the fact that I'm forced to take the course, not towards COBOL in general. I graduate in May of next year, and the course is being discontinued altogether in May of next year. Yet I still have to take it. Needless to say, I was, and am, rather frustrated by it all.
I respect the fact that COBOL has a place in the world. That it's still being used and updated after nearly 50 years is a testament to the language itself. From what little I know of it, I'm already amazed at just how well-suited it is to file-handling. Records are an absolutely remarkable, if somewhat outdated due to databases, way of dealing with data. And I've heard that ISO has recently ratified a standard for OO COBOL. My first programming language was Pascal at age 13, and that seems to be all but dead nowadays. Yet COBOL is still alive and kicking. Or at least writing pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of code about kicking. Lets hope it doesn't try walking or we could be here forever. :) (Though I do respect that it's an incredibly readable language, it is so incredibly wordy!) And your belief that most young people think they know everything is rather accurate. I used to believe that myself and I still have friends who do. (Thankfully, most people seem to grow out of it by about age 20 or so :) Though, as has been said by many people over many generations, the more I learn the more I realize how little I know. p.s. For the record, I'm 23. Though I've been cursed with looking more like 32. (That was a blessing until I turned 21. Since then it's been a curse... how quickly things can change. :) -- Alex Malinovich Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY! Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the pgp.net keyservers. Key ID: A6D24837
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