transputers again was: The dissolution of Commodore 2940

You are buttuming that indexing was always a given. It was not. Also, string manipulations were horrid to do because it had to be done by the COBOL programmer, not the compiler. Do you recall the processor architectures that were created so that string operations could be done in a swell foop?

When did the programmer start working as a coder and who taught him? Probably more important, which machine platforms did he have to work on?

That's not so bad. What is really bad is a COBOL programmer who "saves" code by GOTOing into the middle of a procedure and then going back to the caller. Of course, to keep track of how the code got here in the middle, a value was set so every possible exit point had to test for all the possible ways each paragraph of the procedure was entered. You cannot do that with machine code and survive; once I met a PUSHJ-POPJ pair with a stack, I fell in love :-).

There exist CS degree programs that do not require a scintilla of science, especially physics. How these kids are going to learn that electricity and the speed of light in a vacuum are slow is beyond me. And how we are going to breed kids who will be able to play, with success, quantum circuitry is also an enigma.

Oh, this is bullpoo. Every bit god I knew was in it for the money.

The paper pushing is going there. All programming jobs that go there are done by companies who intend to get out of the development business.

BAH