To Obscurity...

ZibingsCoder

I just felt like telling this to someone, and it seems you all were unlucky enough to be the first I could reach. Never...EVER...say that learning obscure languages (by modern terms) is not lucrative. I just obtained a job with the Pennsylvania State Gov't because I was able to show that I can program COBOL at age 20. It appears that all of the people who can program it are now retiring.

Now, I have yet to find a job that posts FORTRAN as a pre-requisite...but I will someday! cackles

planetsim

😕 well congrats on the job..

ZibingsCoder

Thank you. I have to admit...compared to COBOL, PHP is a hard language. I mean...what could be easier than...

SUBTRACT Tax FROM GrossPay GIVING NetPay

It's worse than Visual Basic, yet the gov't refuses to migrate to newer technologies. They've been running the same program for close to 30 years...

planetsim

ive never actually used, or even see COBOL syntax but i heard it was easy now looking at that its extremely easy. From what i see if you understand english you could do that without knowing the programming concepts

ZibingsCoder

Yep. That was the entire point. Was pretty much made specifically for businessmen who didn't understand the whole...programming logic...thing. It is literally described as having the following structure...

COBOL Program
Divisions
Sections
Paragraphs
Sentences
Statements

You get the idea... It CAN get complicated though...which is always fun. Think of your favorite novel, and imagine it having randomized tabulation, odd patterns of leading numbers here and there... That's a mainframe COBOL program for ya!

Weedpacket

Originally posted by ZibingsCoder
Yep. That was the entire point. Was pretty much made specifically for businessmen who didn't understand the whole...programming logic...thing.

Yeah, but verbosity doesn't equate to ease. How does "Hello World" go again?

You have to admit, it looks like a language designed for Management.

planetsim: you still need to know the concepts - it just takes longer to write them 😃

ZibingsCoder

Yeah, but verbosity doesn't equate to ease.

Very good point. Might be better put if I say that it is easy if you're into BS, which is what management usually deals with/creates. Hello World...heh, here's the "minimalist" program for it...

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID.   Hello-World.
AUTHOR.          Andrew Male.

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    DISPLAY "Hello, World!".
    STOP RUN.

Still pretty straightforward, but a lot more to it than just..

<?php
    echo ( "Hello, World!" );
?>

drawmack

COBOL has some wierdness with it's formatting because it dates back to the days of the card punch.

Did they ever fix the 80 character line limit?

ZibingsCoder

I'm not entirely sure to be honest. It's not exactly the language that I spent 4 years learning, but I am pretty sure that they fixed it in later "versions" of the language. However, since most of the programs around with it date back before that fix, I doubt even if it is fixed I'd get to enjoy the benefits.

Btw...are you anywhere near Allentown? See your location is the Poconos...just wondering. I'm down near Harrisburg personally.

drawmack

I'm about 45 minutes from Allentown right by Broadheadsville, off the leghiton exit of 33

ZibingsCoder

Alright. Gonna have to ask the rents on that one...dad used to run all over the state as an insurance adjuster, I swear the guy knows every bloody town in here...