[Info-vax] And another one bites the dust....

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/21/2022 10:19 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Academics shouldn't be teaching programming languages, they should be
> teaching programming concepts.  If you know C or Pascal, learning
> how to write the procedure division code in COBOL should be a matter
> of a couple hour's study.  Once you know the concepts, learning the
> syntax is easy.  (Frustrating, perhaps, because the COBOL syntax is
> so horrible, but easy.)
> 
> So, I don't think there is any need to teach the programming part of
> COBOL in school.

Learning the basic building blocks of variables, if, loops and
call are relative easy. Most people can learn that stuff.

There are more difficult topics. Some that I know cause a
lot of problems for people to grasp are:
- covariant and contravariant generic types
- currying and partially applied functions

Note that those are not language specific either - they can
be shown in different languages - even though far from all
languages support them.

Arne