________________________________ From: Ted MacNEIL <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, April 22, 2010 10:05:02 AM Subject: Re: COBOL - no longer being taught - is a problem
>Considering how many different programming languages I've had to deal with over the course of my career, one of the most useful skills I acquired in school was the ability to learn new programming languages, not the ability to program in some specific language. I don't disagree with that concept, but in the case of the rookie (or co-op) programmer, why not teach them COBOL while you're teaching them programming skills. They have to learn some language, and COBOL is still a major need in the IT working world. ----------------------------------------------- Ted: Interesting issue. I have talked to people who do the hiring of application types and the consensus that I have heard is that the more languages an application knows the more likely he/she will be hired. Now I am talking reasonably current languages, not Fortran RPG etc... COBOL still is a MUST. Having said that saying you know a language is a far stretch (at times) from working in it on a day to day basis. Some of the comments on here seem to think that things like DYL and EASYTREIVE RPG, frankly I do not agree they are really languages. I am not trying to put down the report programs but you must admit they are a little far from a computer language, NO? In fact I have seen clerks (and I do mean clerks) write a "program". Now these programs were compiled with assembler H. They were essentially HUGE Macro's. The easytrieve category is somewhat more programmer oriented as you had to work with fields in a record. Where the assembler programs it was all done underneath the covers so the clerks did not have to worry about record layouts. The idea of language is getting a little loose I will grant you but I will stand on RPG, EASYTREIVE, DYL and others in my opinion are not anything close to a language. I am curious as to what other have to say about what is and what isn't a language. Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
