OT: Punctuation-starved Programming Languages

[Don Y]

Brian L. Stuart wrote:
>> From: Sean Conner <spc at conman.org>
>>    But that
>> aside, I can only think of a few that did not rely upon punctuation that
>> much.  COBOL is one (although I don't know it well enough to say).
> 
> When Grace Hopper spoke at one of the National Computer Conference
> Founder's Days, she mentioned some things about COBOL syntax
> that I thought were rather insightful.  She said there are two kinds of
> people in the world.

- those who think there are two kinds of people in the world
- those who don't!

:>

> There are those of us who are basically
> mathematicians, and we like to replace words with symbols.  Then
> there are the non-mathematicians who want to describe symbols
> in words.  COBOL was created for the latter group.

Unfortunately, the former type ends up creating products
that the *latter* type have to use!  (which, perhaps, explains
why so many products are poorly designed?)