On Thursday 31 March 2005 10:00 pm, Jim Herrmann wrote:
Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
People have been writing code for PC's in C now for a couple of decades, and it doesn't look like someone's going to suddenly sweep it all away with some new fad. If you understand C, you'll understand most of the OS coding projects that are around today.
Would you say the same about COBOL?
Yes, but while C is the language of choice on PC's, which are the platform of choice for new directions in computing, COBOL is a legacy language that is mostly used on older, existing installations as opposed to new development. There will continue to be a place for COBOL programs for many years to come, and it's probably not a bad career move to learn it.
On the other hand, you're not likely to get into a programming career where you get to do anything new and interesting in COBOL, while you are likely to if you know C and some of it's variants. COBOL's coding practices are pretty much obsolete when it comes to modern computer platforms, while C is used for everything from microdevices to computers like Blue Gene.
As far as Ruby and Python go: My first programming language was APL. It's an amazing application of symbolic logic that can reduce a three-page BASIC program to three lines of code (split into three lines mostly for readability). Entire multi-million-dollar, multi-story computing centers were built around the hardware that was specially designed to run it (IBM's 360/370 series). One of the first portable comuters was built to run it.
How many people are programming in APL today?
(Besides APL, I speak BASIC, Fortran77, COBOL, RPG II, System 370 Assembler, and a few other choice, obsolete nuggets. Which is one reason I'm a sysadmin, not a coder.)