| Richard Brady 2007-06-18, 9:56 pm |
| And I like PL/I, too. But I see COBOL and PL/I in the same light as
black-and-white televisions or typewriters: very useful in their day.
They were a necessary first step, creating a market and showing what
could be done. They were valuable stepping stones.
But they also showed us what we lack. We have developed new computing
paradigms while using COBOL, PL/I, Fortran, Algol and do on. Those
paradigms arose from the shortcomings of COBOL, PL/I, etc. even as HD tv
arose from the shortcomings of color and B&W tv.
The bad news is that COBOL was the lingua-franca of computers and now we
have the tower of Babel. C# is great, unless we work on a platform
without Micro$haft Windows. Then maybe Java is the ticket or ?
The good news is that we COBOL programmers may be needed for sometime to
come, maintaining the wrapped code and translating COBOL to languages
that support modern computing paradigms. For the latter, we may need to
think in multiple languages and paradigms to be employable. Since we
are no longer training COBOL programmers, the day will come when the
last COBOL programmer retires and the employers of the world will want
all their wrapped COBOL replaced. Just as all of our B&W tvs are gone.
Thank you Mr. Dashwood.
Yet another Richard
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