>George,
>
>Permit me to "correct" a few of the things you have said. . .
>
>1) COBOL is not (repeat: NOT) a line-oriented programming language. It bears *NO* resemblence at all to BASICA.
>
>2) The is now a structured COBOL. While I have not seen it, I know that IBM has delivered it and I think Micro Focus has one too.
>
>3) GOOD COBOL is somewhat "wordy", but then the objective of COBOL (acronym for COmmon Business Oriented Language) was exactly that as far as its PROCEDURE DIIVISION was concerned. A statemnt might read. . .
> ADD EXTENDED-COST TO SALES-TAX GIVING TOTAL-COST as opposed to some language's. . .
> tcst = amt+stx
> *or*
> IF CUSTOMER_HAS_PREFERRED_STATUS. . . as opposed to
> IF cstat = "P". . .
>Unfortunately that aspect of COBOL is the first to suffer with many programmers, rendering as useless as any other language.
>
<>

The reason COBOL is so wordy and looks (almost) like English comes from its history -- It was the first "real" business language and as such it needed to be readable by non-programmers. This was because we were all moving into uncharted territory and the bean counters needed to be sure that their beans were being counted correctly by these diabolical machines and the programmers weren't bean counters. This is why bean counters (a) still don't trust programmers and (b) still like us to account for our time in lines of code!!

Jen
bringing the history of computing to life!

A bipolar theory does not neatly describe a continuum.

Before millenium: chop wood, draw water. After millenium: chop wood, draw water.