HOW, WHEN, WHAT, GOALS!

[Thunderwave]

First off, I can't remember much of my youth after a car accident and a concussion.  It's amazing I survived the accident.

As long as I can remember I was always into fractals.  I was always into the latest things I could learn about or know.  I remember watching math programs as a child, but I can't remember what they taught me.  "3, 2, 1, Contact", A math detective show and some others I'm sure.  I loved Algebra, but hated geometry.

I watched Science channels and even dissected sentences for fun.  I was a true nerd until my accident.  Now I'm starting almost over from square one.  I think there was a TV Show called "Square one"...

Anyways, I intend to get back that knowledge I lost.  Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

Fractals, Quantum Theory, and any other new developments in science and philosophy is all I want out of this.  I plan to use it to enhance my artistic nature, since that is still a part of me even after the accident.  In fact I think it made my art better.  I rely on intuition now more then brain power, since my brain is mostly suffering from some sort of mental block.

I mainly suffer from forgetfulness.  I try to take pills for that, but "seriously" I forget to take them.

[Nahee_Enterprises]

   Hmmm, I guess I'm extremely biased against any language where the
    basic syntax itself requires words longer than 4 characters and consists
    of entire sentences    

I can now see why you stated you were a "2-time restarter (loser !!)" when it came to learning at college.  You really never truly learned COBOL, nor used it on a regular basis while being employed.  One can use words that are 4 characters or less, and you do not need to have entire sentences.  Until you actually learn something and really use it, you should not talk about it as if you did know it.

   At least I am when the structure of the language forces the run-time machine code
    to jump through hoops e.g. performing 200 operations where 20 or 30 would do if it
    were written in pure assembler.  

That usually only happens when somebody does not know what they are doing when coding with COBOL.  Which, as you already implied, you really never got to learn and use.  Granted it is not as efficient as Assembler, but neither is C or any other language.  COBOL was not meant to be the most efficient, and many other languages meet that criteria as well.  It was meant to make it easy for most anybody to learn and use.  Whether they were capable of learning it enough to use it more efficiently is another matter.

   I guess I'm most biased against SQL because Microsoft consistently broke the
    ODBC support for Macromedia Authorware with every update of Win95, 98 and Me.
    Though I guess here Microsoft and Adobe are the real culprits rather than SQL itself !

Microsoft's SQL software, which is their RDBMS server, is based upon the SQL language.  It is not the true SQL language.  But as we all should know by now, Microsoft and other large companies (like Adobe) think they can do whatever they so desire, which means trying to set the standard in their own image (kind of like having a GOD complex).

I have used SQL with many RDBMS software distributions, and for many years.  I even teach classes in how to use SQL.  I am willing to compare my knowledge and experience with both COBOL and SQL against yours any day.
 

[bib]

There are many interesting debates these days (for those who are in the UF-list as well )

my knowledge of SQL is : SELECT * FROM ... WHERE ...

[Nahee_Enterprises]

   my x worked in cobal for AT&T life was good, but then as mentioned it became obsolete.

And I worked for AT&T from 1994 to 1997.  I programmed in both Assembler and COBOL while working with them.  I also programmed for PC's using BASIC and a database system, not to mention systems support using MVS, ISPF, and a ton of other things.

If COBOL is so obsolete, why was a new standard written in 2002??  Why are there still people hiring COBOL programmers??  Why are there so many companies still running code written in COBOL??

But seeing how you never worked with COBOL and really know nothing of what you are talking about, and that you basically told Trifox that you are just an old woman, I can see your statements are meaningless.
          
 

[bib]

I'm glad you added the smileys because there might be more polite ways to say this...

[Bent-Winged Angel]

Old is relative! BTW nahee your 60 & I'm 54, sooo who's old?  I am old enough to be trifox's mother. Surely you could be his father.   Motorcycle momma!    If cobal was not obsolete then why did they write a new standard? 

bib ya think?  Civility/chivalry are lost arts.  Also I  believe that David Makin had mentioned that cobal was a dinosaur.

[cKleinhuis]

hey hey, please   , please leave my parents out of it,
@nahee why so mean?, you are really disturbed by the peoples talking about cobol ? lets see what the people say about flash programmin in 30 years, when i will retire...
dont be so offended when people talk about "dead" languages, they are dead because of common sense, implemented systems use language sets similar to assembler in the
old days, and i have to commit never did anything with cobol in my life
#

 

[David Makin]

Paul always has a way with words and has been known to rub a lot of folks up the wrong way to use a rather cliched phrase.
In my case I'm so thick-skinned that his sometimes slightly abrasive way of responding is just water off a ducks back to use another cliche.

Truth be told if it were feasible I believe *everything* should be written in assembler, unfortunately the advent of certain features of CPU hardware has made this difficult - one of my favourite techniques for writing compact, fast code on the old 8-bits (6809/Z80 etc) was to write self-modifying code but that possibility essentially disappeared with instruction caching.
So I guess really I'm even more of a dinosaur than COBOL because the number of programmers using *any* assembler at all seems to be dramatically falling - to the point where I know several Computer Science graduates who have to use a calculator to convert from decimal to hexadecimal.
This is not a good trend as it means even those "good" at programming in high level langiages are losing touch with what goes on "under the hood".
Having said all that I do actually now disagree with Paul regarding optimising compilers for C/C++ because the best ones are now so optimised I believe it would be difficult to write the same code in native assembler that's more than around 5% faster at runtime (in general) - I do not believe there are any other high level languages with such a level of optimisation at the moment, for certain not Visual Basic or Java for instance (of course Java's a special case). I should add that in the past writing something in assembler rather than in C (say on the Amiga) would produce speeds more on the order of 1000% faster !