Those that can program. Those that can't COBOL. Common Business Oriented Language was not designed for programming as much as an attempt to allow snoopy managers a chance to see what the programmer is doing without having to learn a language. However eventually when COBOL was sufficient fleshed out for making the primitive programs of the time it was to complex to read by a non-programmer. So the next attempt at making the program readable was structure where you could title the paragraphs and follow the flow. Structure is fine yet in some cases it can cause duplicate code and slow the system down as a trade off. I Know the final days of COBOL equating to money was the Y2K bug. Now it has gone back into obscurity. However you should know something of it, as it is important for English majors to know about old English. One day you may run in to it in some dark dusty corner or find a jazzed up version of COBOL for those old machines that won't die. And this is a good book to start with. Aside from the practical examples there are lists of ASCII and even quick cards. There are programming techniques and job control hints. Again this is a good starting place to learn your history.
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