Go Cougs

Back when I was in college, which still wasn't so long ago, we were required to take a COBOL programming class. This made no sense to anyone, because COBOL wasn't used anywhere. But it probably served as a nice primer for me, since I'm programming in a different dead language now, BASIC. Or Pick/BASIC.

As an aside: check out all the jobs on monster for PICK programmers!!!)

Today, as I was reading an article about the top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills, I came across this nugget:

...you can actually learn Cobol at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, which according to Mary Sumner, a professor there, still offers a Cobol course. "Two of the major employers in the area still use Cobol, and for many of their entry-level jobs, they want to see that on the transcript," she says. "Until that changes, we'd be doing the students a disservice by not offering it."

A disservice? A disservice is requiring a dead language when the world's going crazy over Java or ASP or god know what (I'm completely out of that loop), and not offering one Web based programming class at all. I've been fucking disserviced.

Anyway, I thought my friends Dave and Mark would enjoy the link... you guys had COBOL, right?

Here's another COBOL story. No SIUE in this one though.