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From: SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: COBOL?
Message-ID: <8705250100.aa28439@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 25-May-87 01:48:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: SMOKE.8705250100.aa28439
Posted: Mon May 25 01:48:00 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 26-May-87 00:39:48 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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Although it is of some interest, I wonder why all the esoteric
debate about computing languages in an Apple 2 message base?
Some of us program as little as possible.  I'll code in FORTRAN
when I need something done on the mainframe that I can't yank out
of "canned" software, and I'm not above a bit of Applesoft now and
then.  I've actually seen a few flavors of BASIC that aren't half
bad (if Applesoft had PRINT USING, MAT commands, true subroutine
calls, and managed memory better, it would be pretty serviceable,
though still too slow - even when compiled)

I find COBOL unbelievably tedious, but if choosing a language
depends on purpose, then there is one REALLY GOOD reason for
learning COBOL - MONEY (lots of it really).  Seems most businesses
aren't interested in C, Ada, Prolog, or even Pascal.  They've got
all that already written COBOL code (zillions of lines of it) that
needs to be maintained.  One can make a pretty good living just
documenting existing COBOL programs (without ever writing a line
of new code).