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"I think that, like species, languages will form evolutionary trees, with dead-ends branching off all over. We can see this happening already. Cobol, for all it
by maxharris 9y ago
"I think that, like species, languages will form evolutionary trees, with dead-ends branching off all over. We can see this happening already. Cobol, for all its sometime popularity, does not seem to have any intellectual descendants. It is an evolutionary dead-end-- a Neanderthal language."
http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html
- intopieces 9y agoWhat is this point of this quote? I downvoted this comment because it does not contribute to the discussion. A common tactic is to post a quote, wait for people to refute the most common/charitable interpretation of the quote's meaning in the context of discussion, then to reply with "that's not what I meant" and end it satisfied. So tell us, what is the point of bringing up this quote?
- moxious 9y agoPoster isn't biting on this request. Somewhat ironically the quote is sourced from an article about a disfavored language arguing why cobol should be a disfavored language. Engineering is subject still to styles and fads, I guess the quote is just furthering that general mentality. COBOL isn't "cool" whatever that should mean.
- ckarmann 9y agoThe purpose of species is to reproduce themselves. The purpose of programming languages is not to produce other languages but to write software. It seems Cobol served this purpose well at the time.