Taking the comparison seriously though for a moment. In my opinion the difference is that C++ isn't just a better Cobol. Its not just the same thing re-imagined or cleaned up. There is a revolution between them. You can do things in C++ that you cant in Cobol.
Im waiting for that revolutionary new general purpose language that goes mainstream. I think it will be a language that scales much better and easier to hundreds of cores. Maybe it will be a functional language.
It's a new meme of mine. Glad you had fun with it. :)
"Im waiting for that revolutionary new general purpose language that goes mainstream. I think it will be a language that scales much better and easier to hundreds of cores. Maybe it will be a functional language."
I am too. I think Rust is a nice alternative to C++ for doing that sort of thing. Far as next step, I'm waiting too. I encourage you to check out Julia because it seems to have some of those traits. It's a LISP on the inside with a productive, imperative skin on the outside. Lots of potential for such a hybrid.
Also, check out ParaSail if you're interested in languages designed for easy parallelism. It's an Ada superset with some interesting design decisions. Might be worth factoring into the next, ideal language. ;)
I'm not trying to be a jerk. Just voicing my concerns. Learning a new language and producing code in it is a huge commitment. It better be around in 50 years. Will it still be as clean and simple, or will it have grown complex.
Note: That the C++ and COBOL counterpoints look identical and laughable never gets old for me.