On Sun, 30 Jul 2023 17:32:54 -0400, Bob Bridges wrote:
>
> ... But it never seemed to me that COBOL statements were any easier to
> learn, or more intuitive, than those of FORTRAN or Basic.
>
In defense of verbosity:
Once in the late 1960s I counseled a physics graduate student who was struggling
to learn FORTRAN. He coded many assignment statements that corresponded
to elements of a matrix, then
PRINT <coefficients>
He came to me asking why the computer had not found the solution to a system
of linear equations.
since then, perhaps earlier, I have disliked the use of "=" for assignment.
Some languages do better with "SET variable = expression",
or Pascal with "variable := expression" (the asymmetric delimiter is
informative.) C tries and perhaps does worse by using "=" for assignment
but something else for a relational operator. Rexx and PL/I do yet worse
by using "=" for both and depending on context-sensitivity.
--
gil
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
