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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2024 08:24:40 -0000 (UTC)
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On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 09:12:02 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> COBOL was massively good at what it did, and what it still does.

Too short-sighted in its design: in its focus on what passed for 
“business” needs in the early 1960s, it struggled to keep up with the 
growing popularity of relational databases in the 1970s and 1980s. To 
construct SQL queries, you really needed good dynamic string handling, and 
COBOL explicitly eschewed all that. So SQL handling was always some kind 
of bag on the side, rather than properly integrated into the language.