From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!dm Newsgroups: net.flame Title: Re: COBOL is a joke Article-I.D.: yale-com.583 Posted: Fri Jun 11 10:12:04 1982 Received: Sun Jun 13 01:52:13 1982 A theory about COBOL, paraphrased without permission from the author whose name will be withheld to protect him from any COBOL fanatics. Postulate #1 Programming is a somewhat difficult task which not everyone is capable of working 9 to 5 at. Postulate #2 Big business likes to pay people for working 9 to 5, not the irregular hours that many programmers like to keep. Theorem #1 Only one in twenty keystrokes used in a COBOL program are really necessary PROOF: For almost any COBOL program, an equivalent APL program could be written in under 1/20 keystrokes of the COBOL. CONCLUSIONS: For people who have trouble doing intensive programming sessions COBOL is their salvation. Rather than be constantly thinking where the next keystroke must go, COBOL has a built in rest time in every instruction. SO... for those who are not capable of programming eight hours a day, you can spend eight hours writing COBOL, have many pages of code to show your supervisor, and be able to look busy all day long, in order to justify your paycheck. decvax!yale-comix!dm