News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on IBM will offer free COBOL training. Parent comment

Re:IBM will offer free COBOL training by Bayart on Saturday April 11, 2020 @11:54AM (#22842289)
>If your one of the people who hyperventilates when you see a goto because you learned that it was considered harmful in programmer school then Cobol might not be for you. ;)

I don't know, at this point seeing a GOTO in my « native language » (the C language) is so incredibly weird that my first thought is « this guy is trying to do something weird and interesting ». It just wouldn't cross my mind somebody would be using a GOTO as a result of ignorance or laziness.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM will offer free COBOL training by jacoblambda on Saturday April 11, 2020 @02:06PM (#22843074)
Really? Not trying to be derisive, just surprised. One of the common paradigms in C is GOTO for cleanup and error handling. I know it can be avoided if you really try however when used correctly, it can greatly improve the readability of code.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM will offer free COBOL training by sjburt on Saturday April 11, 2020 @02:19PM (#22843160)
C gotos are scoped to the function, making them fairly reasonable to use. COBOL and FORTRAN have global gotos.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM will offer free COBOL training by lonelappde on Saturday April 11, 2020 @02:56PM (#22843376)
Real programmers use INTERCAL's COME FROM
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM will offer free COBOL training by jacoblambda on Sunday April 12, 2020 @08:59PM (#22852206)
Oh lord, it's been a while since the last time I've heard someone mention INTERCAL.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM will offer free COBOL training by WorldMaker on Monday April 13, 2020 @03:48PM (#22859308)
That language with no pronounceable acronym remains an important teaching tool for programming language learning and design.
[ Parent | on HN ]