Need to ask you guys a Question....

I need to take either FORTRAN OR COBAL this semester which do you guys think is easier ?

I posted here just because this board gets the most hits and I know some of the people here :-)

ANyhow thanks

imo, FORTRAN

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Halo
I posted here just because this board gets the most hits and I know some of the people here :-)

---

Exactly the reason you shouldn't post in the C++ board. Read the rules.

I agree with ROD, but COBOL has a wider base. If you plan on getting a job in the feild, having a background in COBOL will help you get a job more than the latter. There are thousands upon thousands of man hours of COBOL code out there, many businesses (including banks) used COBOL for years. It was an industry standard at one time (officially or not). Your job may require porting that code or just plain maintaining it.

I think I am learning COBOL this semester, I thought languages like that were long gone, I guess not...

You realise that Fujitsu has just released COBOL .NET. :)

Why do you have to choose between COBOL and FORTRAN?

Why not Java and LISP, etc?

If it's Fortran 90 I think you should go with Fortran. Since
you captalize it, it leads me thing that they will teach
Fortran 77. This really depends on what you want to be a math programmer/ buisness programmer.

Quote:

---

Why do you have to choose between COBOL and FORTRAN?
Why not Java and LISP, etc?

---

I think he waited to long to regester for the spring semester :)

If you are into C or similar, Fortran will be much easier than Cobol.

>>> but COBOL has a wider base

I don't think that is necessarily true. Certainly in the legacy mainframe market it would be, and there is still a little development being done, to whit, object COBOL. However, a great many scientific and research staff routinely write in Fortran because it is so good at dealing with mathematics, which is, after all, what the language was originally designed to do, (FORmula TRANslator).