From: arne@vajhoej.dk   
      
   On 12/1/2025 9:39 PM, bill wrote:   
   > On 12/1/2025 8:31 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:   
   >> But that does not change that:   
   >> * back in those days   
   >   
   > Exactly what do you consider to be "back in those days"?   
      
   Let us say before 1995.   
      
   Then I guess the segment I am thinking of started to switch   
   to VB6 and then a few years later ASP and a few years later again   
   PHP.   
      
   >>                       then there were some people   
   >>    doing Cobol that should not have - this is widely   
   >>    known -   
   >   
   > Not widely known in the circles I worked in.  If I were not a   
   > competent COBOL programmer I would have been eliminated.   
      
   Programming is a skill like any other skill.   
      
   Normal/gaussian distribution.   
      
   Few very good.   
   Some good.   
   Lot okay.   
   Some not so good.   
   Few really bad.   
      
   Some of the latter two categories do end up being hired. By mistake,   
   because the company can not get any other or something else.   
      
   What language did those people pick back then?   
      
   VB6, ASP and PHP was not invented yet.   
      
   They did not have a chance with C++ or Ada. They would never get   
   anything to compile. Out of the question.   
      
   Fortran 77 is also an easy language to learn, but it was mostly   
   taught in natural science and social science studies. And the people   
   I am talking about could not pass the math exam for those.   
      
   C can be a bit more tricky and was also a bit computer science   
   and electric engineering oriented at that time, so math exam   
   again.   
      
   They practically had to pick Cobol or Basic.   
      
   More jobs in Cobol so most picked Cobol.   
      
   Not a problem with Cobol or Basic or the people that were   
   actually good in those languages.   
      
   Just how things work.   
      
   Today we have them mostly in PHP.   
      
   Not using Laravel and writing OO PHP.   
      
   1000 lines long PHP files with SQL execution and HTML output   
   totally mixed up and wrong indentation etc..   
      
   Arne   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)