Re: Beginner's Language?

[Lao Xiao Hai <laoxhai@ix.netcom.com>]

stephan@pcrm.win.tue.nl wrote:

> I definitely nominate COBOL. It will have the added advantage that
> whatever comes next will look as an improvement. (OK, there's still
> INTERCAL).

I assume this was a joke.   In reality, there are still a lot of people successfully
developing software with COBOL.  Moreover,   the current COBOL standard,
and its planned successor, are both quite easy for applications developers to
learn and use.  One of COBOL's virtues has been that, in large corporations,
people who understand the problem domain have been able to transition to
the role of programmer and create solutions.   Typically, these people have
little training in computer science.  They are able to learn on the job.

I have seen a lot of excellent COBOL programmers who have made the
leap from clerical jobs to programming jobs and who have done really
good work.   Also, COBOL is not going away anytime soon, contrary
to popular opinion.    And it is still better for business data processing
applications than C++, any day of the week.   I would have to say it is
better for most of these kinds of applications than Perl or Scheme, Smalltalk
or even Java.    Ada might be the exception because it has a built-in decimal
type and a well-defined Information Systems Annex.    However, I don't
see Ada replacing COBOL anytime soon any more than I see any of those
other languages replacing it.   COBOL continues to evolve and improve,
but few in the programming community keep up-to-date about those
changes.  So many of them wrote it off long ago that they don't know
how it has improved over what it once was.    It is much like those who
still criticize Ada based on the old Ada 83 standard or Smalltalk based
on an outdated view of that language.   Hmmmm. Maybe Ruby will do. :-)

Richard Riehle