There's an incorrect meme there.

They guys who have been writing COBOL for 40 years are good at it. They would be good in any language.

Uh, no. If all you know is COBOL, any estimates of your ability in another language are a shot in the dark. In fact, you'd probably be rubbish. This, of course, applies to any language. Most recently, I've seen it with Java. Years ago I took over a small program in QuickBASIC written by my manager. He had a very COBOL-oriented programming mindset which was extremely evident in the code I threw away.

Like all languages, they teach a way of thinking. It's like learning a tool. Many programmers do not learn more than a small number of tools and often find themselves using the wrong tool to solve a problem. I saw it with programmers who got unnecessarily excited about sub-Selects in MySQL (when they were, in fact, a performance killer). I see it with programmers who think they understand the concepts of MVC or data-abstraction when actually they don't. I see it in programmers who believe Structs and Hibernate is The Way To Do Things and want to therefore radically alter a database's schema for no other reason than "it's wrong"... :-/

Wade.

Post #309,291 by static 5/28/09 9:24:31 PM Reply	There's an incorrect meme there. They guys who have been writing COBOL for 40 years are good at it. They would be good in any language. Uh, no. If all you know is COBOL, any estimates of your ability in another language are a shot in the dark. In fact, you'd probably be rubbish. This, of course, applies to any language. Most recently, I've seen it with Java. Years ago I took over a small program in QuickBASIC written by my manager. He had a very COBOL-oriented programming mindset which was extremely evident in the code I threw away. Like all languages, they teach a way of thinking. It's like learning a tool. Many programmers do not learn more than a small number of tools and often find themselves using the wrong tool to solve a problem. I saw it with programmers who got unnecessarily excited about sub-Selects in MySQL (when they were, in fact, a performance killer). I see it with programmers who think they understand the concepts of MVC or data-abstraction when actually they don't. I see it in programmers who believe Structs and Hibernate is The Way To Do Things and want to therefore radically alter a database's schema for no other reason than "it's wrong"... :-/ Wade. "Ah -- I take it the doorbell doesn't work?"
Post #309,292 by boxley 5/28/09 9:30:05 PM Reply	you must know my crew
Post #309,293 by drook 5/28/09 10:15:35 PM Reply	Fairy nuff Great programmers, the ones who write trading systems that process hundreds of transactions per second, probably study multiple languages and styles. That they happen to be writing in COBOL is probably as much due to when they started programming as it does to the preexisting codebase. But there is a COBOL way of thinking that can be incredibly limiting if that's all you know. And yes, that's true of any language. -- Drew

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