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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1696ae,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid1696ae,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal? Date: 1996/07/19 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 168979248 references: <4rs76l$aqd@ccshst05.uoguelph.ca> <4sdlco$rtl@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <4sf9e7$kl7@news.jump.net> <01bb74ac$b7aa7860$7b91f780@deangulo> <01bb7588$236982e0$7b91f780@deangulo> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.dos.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-07-19T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Carlos said "And about your COBOL remark... The only reason COBOL is still alive in the business world, is because large corporations have this code so spread out through out their corporations that changing to anything else would cost millions of dollars. Convincing customers to change to another language because it is more powerful usually doesn't "cost justify" itself to them. Fortunatelly we as programmers have the choice of what environment we want to spend our time in. If you want to spend your time working on a dinosaur language like COBOL, or if you want to spend your time on C++ which is the language that most of the software development corporations in the world are using." In the information systems world, which clearly from your remarks you are unfamiliar with, C++ is not particularly attractive, and for example Smalltalk has generated much more interest. COBOL, which I also would guess from your remarks is something you are not familiar with, is in fact a powerful tool, and is the language of choice, even for a lot of new development being done in client/server setups using PC's. One thing you quickly learn in this field is that most people have a rather narrow view of the world (for example, it is not unusual to find people who assume that Unix has a large percentable of the operating system market).