From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:CAD:teklabs!tekid!rogerw Newsgroups: net.jokes Title: COBOL joke, round 3 Article-I.D.: tekid.66 Posted: Mon Jun 14 11:16:22 1982 Received: Wed Jun 16 02:02:00 1982 Regardless how useful COBOL might be for data processing needs, one of the original claims for the language turned out to be a real joke [and most of us who make our living as programmers can be thankful]. When it originally was developed, COBOL was supposed to be a language that was programmed in *natural English*; *anyone* who could write a memo could program in COBOL. Whereas most any language from SNOBOL to PASCAL uses some- thing of the form C = A + B [ or :=, or some relatively sim- ple replacement operator], COBOL originally only had the more natural English expression, ADD A TO B GIVING C, which is of course the way real humans, speaking their native tounge, would say things. I'm told in the early sixties the word was that pro- grammers would all soon be replaced, because all a manager would have to do is say, ``Betty, take a memo to my computer ...'' Ha, ha ... Roger Wells (teklabs!tekid!rogerw)