13 Dec
2015
13 Dec
'15
6:42 p.m.
>> For many years, I kept around a plug-board
labelled "COBOL INTERPRETER",
>> just to prove that a COBOL interpreter was possible :-)
On 12/12/2015 06:13 PM, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> Are you using "interpreter" in two senses here, or just one? That is to
> say, I'm not sure if you're saying the "COBOL interpreter" was just
a
> program that printed COBOL source on a punched card, or if you mean it
> actually ran the program.
On Sat, 12 Dec 2015, Jon Elson wrote:
I'm pretty sure this was a joke based on the
meaning of the word interpreter.
If he could have actually run an arbitrary COBOL program, with named
variables and conditional branching on a plugboard-based accounting machine,
I think IBM would have been VERY interested in hiring him! (Or possibly
having him dumped in a nearby body of water with concrete overshoes.)
Folded, spindled, stapled, and mutilated!
It would probably take a larger plugboard to turn a machine for printing
card contents on them into a language processor.
The reason that Jonathan Swift is cataloged with children's books instead
of prose satire, and why Douglas Adams never succeeded is because they
didn't choose the right emoticons for their works.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com