From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: **** X-Spam-Status: No, score=4.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,INVALID_DATE, MSGID_SHORT,TO_NO_BRKTS_PCNT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!ll-xn!cullvax!drw From: drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc Subject: More fun stuff about Cobol Message-ID: <1490@cullvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 13:33:59 EDT Article-I.D.: cullvax.1490 Posted: Tue Aug 25 13:33:59 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 26-Aug-87 06:50:12 EDT Organization: Cullinet Software, Westwood, MA, USA Xref: mnetor comp.lang.ada:557 comp.lang.c:3897 comp.lang.misc:630 List-Id: I believe that Grace Hopper has been promoted to Commodore, up from Captain. Cobol has been used for non-numerical work. One early compiler (from Hopper's shop) was written in Cobol in the early 50s. Hopper, in order to prove that non-numerical programming was *possible*, wrote a symbolic differentiation program. One person this was demonstrated to accused her of having a human feeding the results into the program by a back door! (This is likely to have been well before compilers were written, but perhaps not...) The original Cobol project was an attempt to put together a subset of English that would allow non-programmers to program computers, thus eliminating professional programmers. Halfway through, it was realized that this was impossible, so they changed the goal to produce a programming language that could be read by a non-programmer. Thus, the project that started out to eliminate programmers produced the language that 70-80% of all programmers work in! (ref Perlis's article in CACM blasting 'Star Wars') Dale -- Dale Worley Cullinet Software ARPA: cullvax!drw@eddie.mit.edu UUCP: ...!seismo!harvard!mit-eddie!cullvax!drw Apollo was the doorway to the stars - next time we should open it. Disclaimer: Don't sue me, sue my company - they have more money.