SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (05/25/87)
Although it is of some interest, I wonder why all the esoteric debate about computing languages in an Apple 2 message base? Some of us program as little as possible. I'll code in FORTRAN when I need something done on the mainframe that I can't yank out of "canned" software, and I'm not above a bit of Applesoft now and then. I've actually seen a few flavors of BASIC that aren't half bad (if Applesoft had PRINT USING, MAT commands, true subroutine calls, and managed memory better, it would be pretty serviceable, though still too slow - even when compiled) I find COBOL unbelievably tedious, but if choosing a language depends on purpose, then there is one REALLY GOOD reason for learning COBOL - MONEY (lots of it really). Seems most businesses aren't interested in C, Ada, Prolog, or even Pascal. They've got all that already written COBOL code (zillions of lines of it) that needs to be maintained. One can make a pretty good living just documenting existing COBOL programs (without ever writing a line of new code).