Rich kids are into COBOL

[Eric Smith]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 11:54 AM, Roe Peterson <roeapeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wouldn't wish a COBOL career on my worst enemy.  What a god-awful mess.

I won't say that COBOL is great now, though arguably it was pretty
great back in 1959 and the early 1960s.  However, it's also not nearly
as awful as most people make it out to be.

Without the COMPUTE verb it would be truly terrible. I was formerly
under the mistaken impression that COMPUTE was not part of the early
standard but something added later. However, I just verified that
COMPUTE was in the 1960 report.

It also helps that COBOL development is in general no longer done with
paragraphs actually written like natural language paragraphs. Ugh.