OT: Punctuation-starved Programming Languages

Jay West wrote: the Codd people would deny any relation to Pick. Pick has the addition of a simple way to handle the multi dimension problem (what are called values) in databases than most SQL databases. This problem is common in applications that deal with business. The most common example to describe where this has to be implemented is line items in invoices. An invoice will have a lot of information about customers, and so forth, but a variable number of items to order. Many databases have horrendous internal representation problems, or operational problems when you go to sort by all the line items across all the invoices in a database, for example. Pick can do this quite quickly, and in fact this is the capability that the community sells after the ease to get programs going as well as reports. I have seen huge threads debating SQL and Pick on comp.databases.pick, and in fact there is a flame war that I could not take time to read all of related to that. Looking that up is better than going into it here. I am a collector of both Pick hardware and software, with a lot of microdata internal documentation. I will send more of it to bitsavers as I get it scanned for their display. I looked up the trademark on English, and Reality recently and found that McDonnell Douglas, allowed it to lapse, which seems like a silly thing to have done. I know there were some defenses of using the term "English language" in relation to programming and computer operation, and Microdata had their hands full with it. I think they lost a dispute over speach recognition, but managed to force most vendors to use "Natural Language" rather than English to avoid trouble.