RIP Jean Sammet, mother of COBOL, ACM past president

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I’m saddened to report that Jean Sammet – one of the true pioneers of our industry – passed away on May 20, at the age of 89. Full obituary in the New
[See the full post at: RIP Jean Sammet, mother of COBOL, ACM past president]

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SueW, JohnW

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COBOL was my first college level programming course.  I messed with BASIC in high school, but this was serious stuff!!!

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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‘-(

* _ ... _ *

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Thanks, Woody — I had not known about Jean Sammet.

COBOL was my mother tongue after I graduated from college in 1969.  The one programming course offered at the University of Vermont — at that time — was FORTRAN, which I took in my junior year, having been a math major.

Programming jobs in FORTRAN were few and far between, so COBOL it was, starting with my first job in New Jersey.  And I loved it, especially writing modular code instead of straight-line code.  From there I added PL/1 and, eventually, Basic-Plus (on Digital gear).  Fond memories.

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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I took two semesters of COBOL programming in college. I really loved COBOL, because it allowed you to easily join or divide chunks of data on each line in the data file. For example, you could easily combine month-date-year into one data item, or you could divide the three up into three (or more) data items. It was great for formatting your data to show on the screen in any way you wanted.

Seeing the various DIVISIONs on the screen brings me back to those days.

FORTRAN was my first language, and Pascal was my favorite language, in college. I ended up being a C programmer after graduation.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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I remember the process of writing the lines of COBOL out on paper, then punching them into a deck of 80 column punch cards.

Then submit them for the data center to run a test compile.  Wait for the printed output.  Read the output. Fix any errors and re-punch the corrected lines of code into new cards.  Re-assemble the deck.  Re-submit.  Lather, rinse, and repeat until it worked.

It’s amazing how much more productive the modern coding process can be now, with the compiler on your desktop.  Or even by using interpreted languages such as Python or Javascript, and no compiler step at all!  Totally interactive.  Brain speed!

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Real men code in LISP…

Being ignorant and not knowing Jean Sammet, I wouldn’t be surprised though, if I didn’t owe the guy a “thank you”.

Coding experience… Amstrad CPC6128 with cp/m and a kind of Basic? Later Comal-80, Pascal, Turbo-Pascal and during the AutoCad years, tons of LISP. Could bring anyone on their weeping knees…

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Jan K. wrote:

I wouldn’t be surprised though, if I didn’t owe the guy a “thank you”

The “guy” happens to be a “gal” . . .

Very interesting obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/technology/obituary-jean-sammet-software-designer-cobol.html.

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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See just how ignorant I am?

Thank for the correction!

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SueW

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