[geeks] Introductory programming language?

[Joost van de Griek]

On 1 Sep 2011, at 17:59 , Lionel Peterson wrote:

> My tongue was firmly planted in cheek when I wrote that, but it can be
learned
> very quickly, and there will always be a need for COBOL/VSAM/CICS/DB2
> programmers, it wouldn't be THAT bad a language to learn...

My take on this entire thread is tongue-in-cheek. It was clear from the get-go
that this would net as many suggestions as there are people on the list.
Successful troll is successful, as they say!

I've been having more fun earning money than ever before in my current job,
which is in a hybrid C/COBOL environment. As much as COBOL is often lamented,
many are the times I am working in C, thinking, if I were using COBOL, right
now, I could solve this problem in three lines of code. Of course, the
resulting program would still be fifty times the size of the C code, because
if anything, COBOL is wordy.

But there is something to be said for the elegance in having a batch job run
through a system at amazing speed, accomplishing all its tasks with a couple
of clever REDEFINEs and a single MOVE CORRESPONDING statement