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in reply to Kyle Hasselbacher

And just as it is today with #Perl, most of those mocking #COBOL have never used it and are just passing around punchlines because the punchlines are funny, tenuous connection to facts be damned.

It’s prejudicial humor, but it’s safe because it’s not about people. Same cognitive error, though.

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

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in reply to Mark Gardner

I see same stuff being passed around about #c #clang by people who are stuck into the 1st edition of K&R.
#c #clang
in reply to Christos Argyropoulos MD, PhD

Every time I see “herp derp can’t read #Perl” memes I think of this picture
#perl

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in reply to Mark Gardner

lolz. I am excited that the "unreadable" #perl made quite obvious a bug in the "wow" #Python version of my code.
in reply to Mark Gardner

In fairness, PL wars have existed since the dawn of highlevel programming; the animosity between the FORTRAN and LISP communities are legendary. Basically, the only thing programmers at large could agree upon was to dunk on COBOL.

I have myself worked in large corporations most of my life and have to come to respect many of the ideas in COBOL as very well suited to such environments.

in reply to Christos Argyropoulos MD, PhD

Sadly, it seems #Perl has taken on a larger role as a meme than visible practical use, being passed around by people who have never used it
#perl

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Mark Gardner
I totally get this urge. It’s the #StreisandEffect applied to programming.
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Walt Mankowski
How did you miss seeing any of the COBOL talks I’ve done at YAPCs over the years?
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Walt Mankowski
If you should ever find yourself needing to parse fixed-length records with no delimiters (some legacy government data is provided in this format) then that might be a good excuse to learn a little COBOL.
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Walt Mankowski
Someday I should write a module that can do something similar using COBOL picture statements as input!
in reply to Walt Mankowski

Make it the input side of #Perl’s long-languished `write` statement for picture `format` output? perldoc.perl.org/functions/wri…

perldoc.perl.org/perlform

Unfortunately, `read` is already taken.

#perl