>I would say that you can't take anyone and make a COBOL programmer. But it's sure that anyone with minimal programming knowledge can understand a simple COBOL program without COBOL knowledge. I don't remember too much of COBOL, but I remember that it was very easy to understand. Maybe I'm wrong in my "souvenirs"...
>
>Vlad

I started in the federal government as a College Co-op doing COBOL programming and I will agree to your statement that
that is easy to understand, but when a program is created by a person that did not learn structured coding techniques, the
program then becomes a real chore. I was taught very early (Indiana State Grad) that you program so that anyone who views
your code after you are gone can understand all aspects of the program, via code documentation or specifications. I had the
task of maintaining code that was created by DINOSAURS and believe me it took a long time to get into there mind and figure
out what they were thinking. As an example, in college the instructors told us to never use the COBOL statement:
GO TO DEPENDING ON variable

It was in COBOL for some stupid reason, but when I was given code from psuedo self-trained COBOL prpogrammers, that
statment was used like SALT on POPCORN.

Needless to say I am grateful I am out of COBOL and on to better things, but that is not to say for $45 per hour I could be tempted
to fix a few programs....