| RHF Joke Archives |

In the beginning there was ENIAC.
And the ENIAC was without language or form.
And so was created Machine Code.  And it was Good.
On the second day, Hex was created.  And it was good.
On the third day, Assembly Language was created.  And it was good.
On the fourth day, Fortran was created and it was good.
On the fifth day, man programmed in Fortran.  And it was very good.

And it was spoken: "Though may program in any of these, but the tree of
COBOL thou shall not partake for thou shalt surely pay for thine 
transgresssions."

But, there was a hacker in the woods who took the form of a mini and
spake to the man and said "Thou shalt not pay for thine transgressions,
for he knoweth that if thou partakest, thou shall have power to program
large and wonderful things that shall be readable by others!"

So, the man partook of COBOL.

And it was spoken: "Thou hast partaken of the tree of COBOL:
Thou art doomed to write hundred thousand line programs,
be enslaved by IBM, and not have other good programming options for years."

And it was so.  Many years passed.  IBM dominated.  Programs grew larger and
larger.
BASIC, Pascal, SNOBOL, PLI, Ada and many others came and went.
IBM dominated.  And COBOL programs grew.

Then, as implied, a program came out of the telephone.
It spread to the universities who took it on and made it grow.
IBM tried to kill it many times, but after the PC was introduced,
it was inevitable.  First, A.  Written in Assembly, not COBOL.
Then B which was better that A.
Then finnaly C took full form and shape.
With UNIX, it launched into the market seemingly impervious to
COBOL's domination.
IBM tried again to kill it.  Through security holes, and portability, and 
unreadability IBM tried.
But C could not be quashed.
The implied savior of programming everywhere had come!
And the great COBOL could finally start to be removed.
Open systems and high capacity graphic's aided and spurred C on until there 
was C for DOS, C++, and finally, C for the IBM series 3090.

And it was very good.

(to be continued ... maybe)

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