Lighten Up
I was just congratulating you for finding a job in my own "weird" way. I'm probably the second more obscure person here behind "Ashton". :-)
As for TOP vs. OO, we've been down that road before. I think they both are good paradigms, and both have their place.
When we're parsing pharmacy claims and putting them in a DB table, top is best. When we're analyzing whether a particular claim is one 'type' or 'another', or what needs to happen next, that's OO. (But, we still have a state table inside the object, so that's why I say that the two can get along...)
As for COBOL, the global scope of everything drives me nuts, too. However, I've seen badly written C code with the same variable name at 2/3/4 scopes that would drive a person nuts, too.
Anyway, let's drop the OOP/TOP banter now, and just bask in the afterglow of that "great new job"...
Glen Austin