COBOL causes brain damage. Other than that a good programmer should use whatever tools (languages) work best for a particular project. Arguments over with language is ‘best’ are a waste of time, except for COBOL ;-).
Ha ha ha!
You can write assembler in any language.
You can write C in any language.
You can write pascal in any language (except, perhaps, FORTRAN IV).
You can write bad rubbish in any language. Don’t get to precious about these things. There is a difference between insight, and persistence. Persistence is where you fiddle anything (in any language) to get a result without knowing why or how. Insight on the other hand, delivers the why and how part.
I’ve seen this over and over and the choice of language does not matter. Even COBOL. (You can write co-routines in COBOL, believe it or not. Now go do that in Pascal or Ada or C or C++ or php or java.)
The only difference in all these things is ultimately how strict a language is on type enforcement. Everything else is mere details. Want proof? Ada 83. Need I say more? Classes? Mere details. Objects. Ditto. In the end, type enforcement is either strict (Ada style, super-anally so), or loose (some basic implementations, or php-style).
Whacko. Live with it. The stuff about psychological damage is just posturing bullshit, said (written) to make a strong point. And MAYBE, just maybe, it does apply to the barely competent programmers, or the truly inept. But for a professional who can change languages at the drop of hat, its rubbish.
Great story, still actual, but last link is dead, or moved to: ACM Queue, 2004: How not to write fortran in any language. Also, the original quote seems from 1982: Real programmers don’t use Pascal, by Ed Post
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Actually, your link is to “How NOT to write FORTRAN in any language”.
A couple other links to “How TO write FORTRAN in any language” would be:
https://www.matthewsworkbench.com/writing-fortran-in-any-language/
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