Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!bu.edu!polygen!bill
From: bill@polygen.uucp (Bill Poitras)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: Re^4: OSF/Motif vs. NeWS vs. SUN/Open Windows vs. ?
Message-ID: <678@polygen.UUCP>
Date: 24 Feb 90 18:00:05 GMT
References: <689@tci.bell-atl.com> <8450001@hpfcdc.HP.COM> <1990Feb21.145849.18857@phri.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: bill@polygen.UUCP (Bill Poitras)
Organization: Polygen Corporation, Waltham, MA
Lines: 25

In article <1990Feb21.145849.18857@phri.nyu.edu> roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
>In article <8450001@hpfcdc.HP.COM> mhn@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Mark Notess) writes:
>> Bill Buxton predicted a couple years ago that the Mac interface would
>> become the COBOL of the 1990s.  Interesting ...
>
[stuff delete]
>at, deride, and use as the punch line of endless jokes, yet is probably one
>of the most commercially important languages used today.
>--
Most important?  How about the most lines currently written.  I don't know
if you realize it, but nobody is creating new programs in COBOL.  The only
reason why COBOL is still used, is because nobody wants to spend the money
to replace the billions (and billions :-) of lines of COBOL into a more
sensible language.  If COBOL is so important, then tell why my University's
College of Computer Science dropped COBOL as an offered course?  I had to still
take FORTRAN, LISP, C, Pascal and learn about other important things: Operating
Systems, compilers, data bases, computer graphics, even the social impact of 
computers (that is required for my degree), but COBOL is not even offered. So
you tell me what is important.

+-----------------+---------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Bill Poitras    | Polygen Corporation       | {princeton mit-eddie        |
|     (bill)      | Waltham, MA USA           |  bu sunne}!polygen!bill     |
|                 |                           | bill@polygen.com            |
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