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Well, I said it was ironic that we went out of our way to make a newer more complicated to read language that was memory safe when we already had a language that was simpler and readable that was safe.

I didn't say I wanted to code in it, though. I'd prefer in no particular order Kotlin, Python, Go, C++, Rust, Perl, C#, Java, Zig, etc. Anything really over COBOL myself. I'm part of the problem.

But, if I was hard up for money and wasn't getting nibbles for jobs? I could see getting into COBOL because there is a lot of money in it and always work available.

My statement stands though, we need to do better when designing the syntax of our languages. Cobol is disliked, yet simple and readable. What does that say about our new languages. How hated are our "new" language remnants going to be when few of us are longer around to maintain them 50 - 75 years from now? And, how easy are they going to be to pick up?

Addendum: I guess it won't matter if the singularity comes and just writes it all for us, of course. Then it will all just be machine code and we won't need these "only human" translation layers any longer.




Is COBOL actually memory safe in the same way Rust is memory safe? I thought it was just "we don't allow dynamic allocation", and I'd assume programmers often implement their own half-baked dynamic allocation on top.


Just like Rust the 'use after free' problem becomes the 'use after it does not make sense' problem instead. Which Valgrind wont find for you either.

I think new Cobol has 'allocate' and 'free' though.




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