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- 1$\begingroup$ Hey LordFarquaad! Welcome to Computer Science Educators! $\endgroup$thesecretmaster– thesecretmaster ♦2017-09-27 20:59:13 +00:00Commented Sep 27, 2017 at 20:59
- 1$\begingroup$ Don't forget that COBOL is still the most prolific language out there, and all of the flow control in COBOL is through equivalents to GOTO $\endgroup$pojo-guy– pojo-guy2017-09-28 01:57:33 +00:00Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 1:57
- 1$\begingroup$ Although this makes sense as an answer, I'm not sure it will help the subset of teachers most at risk of incorrectly introducing GOTO to their cohort. $\endgroup$Sean Houlihane– Sean Houlihane2017-09-28 07:23:45 +00:00Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 7:23
- $\begingroup$ Well, @pojo-guy, you really should update to COBOL 85 or more recent. Cobol 74 really was a pain in the ***, but since 1985 it has all you need for structured programming : loops, if then else, and even a very interesting EVALUATE verb, much more powerful than the rudimentary switch of C/C++/Java etc :-) $\endgroup$Michel Billaud– Michel Billaud2017-09-28 14:07:01 +00:00Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 14:07
- $\begingroup$ I agree that Evaluate is much more powerful than "switch", but COBOL is crippled in other ways. Problems that take three lines of java code can take hundreds of lines of COBOL code - for example finding the intersection set of two sets. Each language expresses different thoughts easily, so they are all valuable. $\endgroup$pojo-guy– pojo-guy2017-09-28 17:33:22 +00:00Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 17:33
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