27 Nov
2007
27 Nov
'07
4:41 p.m.
On 27 Nov 2007 at 16:07, Chris M wrote:
So? The poor kid is likely to develop CTS before he
hits 18. I took COBOL in HS, and man did I hate it.
FORTRAN was much more funner.
Besides, where would you find a COBOL compiler for a
peecee or whatever else? Here's a question - what
8-bitters (or defunct 16-bitters, Atari, Amiga, you
know, the common stuff) had COBOL available?
What was SNOBOL? What about COBAL? I think I have
COBAL for the TI PC.
SNOBOL4 was/is definitely available for the PC as well as that piece
of useless flotsam, the Tandy 2000 (from Catspaw). There may have
been a CP/M version of it, but I'm not sure.
COBOL was even available for CP/M 2.2 (808x/Z80) and certainly
available for a wide range of processors since then.
I've never run into COBAL in my sheltered existence. What is it?
A smattering of assembly language to begin with
maybe. That's something someone will learn only if
they want to. Lots of people have problems with it.
Were you aware that IBM used to publish coding forms for machine
language? IIRC, they called it "(fill in machine name) Absolute
Coding System". I used to have some 1620 ACS forms. The left column
had space for the location, the next column held the opcode, the
third column, the P address and the fourth column, the Q address.
The remainder of the line was left for comments.
Strange as it sounds, the preprinted forms actually were better than
a blank sheet of paper. That punched-card mentality really sticks
around ("one box for one character"). I still code on quadrule
paper.
Cheers,
Chuck