[SATLUG] home computer

[Al Castanoli]

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 17:06 -0600, Brinkley Harrell wrote:
> Benjamin Temple wrote:
> > it would be even worse is it had said "teletype with COBOL" Ive heard the
> > language is hard to learn.
> >
> > {snip}
> COBOL (ah, memories) is not hard to learn -- the question is "how 
> verbose do you want to be". As an example snatched right from Wikipedia, 
> if you wanted to write a statement to compute one of the roots of the 
> quadratic equation:
> 
>           X = (-B + SQRT( B^2 - 4 * A * C) ) / 2 * A
> 
> one solution uses the compute verb:
> 
>           COMPUTE X = (-B + (B ** 2 - (4 * A * C)) **.5) / (2 * A).
> 
> As an alternative, this could also be written as:
> 
>           MULTIPLY B BY B GIVING B-SQUARED. 
>           MULTIPLY 4 BY A GIVING FOUR-A. 
>           MULTIPLY FOUR-A BY C GIVING FOUR-A-C. 
>           SUBTRACT FOUR-A-C FROM B-SQUARED GIVING RESULT-1. 
>           COMPUTE RESULT-2 = RESULT-1 ** .5.
>           SUBTRACT B FROM RESULT-2 GIVING NUMERATOR.
>           MULTIPLY 2 BY A GIVING DENOMINATOR.
>           DIVIDE NUMERATOR BY DENOMINATOR GIVING X.
> 
> But, it's really clear.
> 
> Here some humor from Wikipedia:
> 
> Aphorisms and humor about COBOL
> 
> It has been said of languages like C, C++, and Java that the only way to 
> modify legacy code is to rewrite it - write once and write once again; 
> or write once and throw away. On the other hand, it has been said of 
> COBOL that there actually is one original COBOL program, and it only has 
> been copied and modified millions of times.
> 
> The name "ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL" has been suggested for a 
> hypothetical object-oriented dialect of COBOL, as a play on the name 
> C++. While this is meant to suggest that COBOL is inherently verbose, 
> the form given is more verbose than COBOL actually requires.
> 
> Alternative expansions of the COBOL acronym have been suggested:
> 
>     * Compiles Only Because Of Luck
>     * Compiles Only By Odd Luck
>     * Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
>     * Completely Over and Beyond reason Or Logic
> 
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Brinkley Harrell
> http://www.fusemeister.com

Thanks for the COBOL refresher - I thought I'd left it behind me when I
left a Navy supply ship in 1979.

Al Castanoli