[coolcat59]

is the first letter of your first name begins with any of the following letters? A B C D E F G ?

[agamal007]

Are you F# (pronounced eff sharp) - which is strongly typed, multi-paradigm programming language?

[BambieReader]

are you Assembly languages?

[profprofessorson]

Are you FORTRAN?

[13Ice]

are you DOS?

[coolcat59]

Are you COBOL ?

Do your name starts with an "A"?

Well done CoolCat, I am COBOL

COBOL (along with ALGOL) was one of the first 'grown up' programming languages I learned. It was clumsy and inelegant because it was designed to use real world language syntax so untrained programmers could create quick and dirty programs for businesses (this rarely worked, usually the programmers had to be called in to sort out the mistakes). It was incredibly popular though, and, as such, was almost impossible to kill off when it had outlived its useful life, as an awful lot of essential business software was still written in it at the beginning of the 21st Century. (This 'What am I?' was brought to you, basically, as a tribute to the most useless part of my, now totally useless, degree )

Take it away Wikipedia...

COBOL

COBOL (/ˈkoʊbɒl/, an acronym for common business-oriented language) is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in legacy applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs. But due to its declining popularity and the retirement of experienced COBOL programmers, programs are being migrated to new platforms, rewritten in modern languages or replaced with software packages.[5] Most programming in COBOL is now purely to maintain existing applications.[6]

COBOL was designed in 1959, by CODASYL and was partly based on previous programming language design work by Grace Hopper, commonly referred to as "the (grand)mother of COBOL".[7][8][9] It was created as part of a US Department of Defense effort to create a portable programming language for data processing. Intended as a stopgap, the Department of Defense promptly forced computer manufacturers to provide it, resulting in its widespread adoption.[10] It was standardized in 1968 and has since been revised four times. Expansions include support for structured and object-oriented programming. The current standard is ISO/IEC 1989:2014.[11]

COBOL has an English-like syntax, which was designed to be self-documenting and highly readable. However, it is verbose and uses over 300 reserved words. In contrast with modern, succinct syntax like y = x;, COBOL has a more English-like syntax (in this case, MOVE x TO y). COBOL code is split into four divisions (identification, environment, data and procedure) containing a rigid hierarchy of sections, paragraphs and sentences. Lacking a large standard library, the standard specifies 43 statements, 87 functions and just one class.

Academic computer scientists were generally uninterested in business applications when COBOL was created and were not involved in its design. COBOL has been criticized throughout its life for its verbosity, design process and poor support for structured programming, which resulted in monolithic and incomprehensible programs.

For more go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL

[Alessa9]

Congrats, coolcat59!

[coolcat59]

Thank you!! I remember writing code in COBOL in my uni days too. It was quite fun though.

Thank you!! I remember writing code in COBOL in my uni days too. It was quite fun though.

Haven't actually used it for years, but I remember all those GO TO statements used to drive me crazy.

[raindrops]

This round, coolcat59 discovered in 6 questions that we were looking for a programming language and receives 30 wrz$.
spiritofchaos tortured you for 50 questions and receives 250 wrz$
Congrats, you two!


Now coolcat is invited to start the next round after sending me a pm for the approval of the subject matter.

[coolcat59]

Round 64


New round! You can start asking

Q & A
(1) flawlessdreamer - Are you human ? Yes
(2) avoran - Are you (or were you) a real person? No
(3) drnaveed - Are (were) you a fictional character? Yes
(4) agamal007 - Are you from a movie or TV show ? No
(5) spiritofchaos - Are you from a book ? Yes
(6) thebomb - Are you a sci fi ? No
(7) avoran - Are you from a children's book? No
(8) drnaveed - Are you from a novel ? Yes
(9) spiritofchoas - Was the book written before the year 2000? Yes
(10) flawlessdreamer - Are you female ? Yes
(11) avoran - Are you male ? No. (I've been told you only need 3 posts between questions )
(12) drnaveed - Are you the main character of the book? Yes
(13) Alessa9 - Are you in a romance novel ? No
(14) spiritofchaos - Was the book written before the year 1900? No
(15) avoran - Was the book written in English? No
(16) wtman - Did your story happen between 1900-2000? (A simple Yes or No is not possible)
(17) drnaveed - Is the author of the book alive? Yes
(18) Alessa9 - Is the author of the book a man? Yes
(19) spiritofchaos - Has the book been translated into English? Yes
(20) avoran - Do you appear in more than one book? No
(21) thebomb - is the book written by a woman? No (see Q18)
(22) 13Ice - are your books a part of a series? No
(23) wtman - Did the story happen in alternate reality or secondary world? (I'm inclined to say No but it's subject to interpretation.)
(24) flawlessdreamer - Is the book a triller ? Yes. its one of the genres in its classification
(25) drnaveed - Was the book written (or 1st published) after 1990? Yes
(26) profprofessorson - Is the original language of the book French or German ? No
(27) avoran - Was the book written in a European language ? No
(28) Zoie -Is the book setting in Europe ? No
(29) 13Ice - Does the last name of the author of the book start with the letters T-Z? No
(30) drnaveed - Was the book written in an Asian language? Yes
(31) avoran - Does the book involve the woman travelling away from her home town? No
(32) profprofessorson - Does the story have a main crime/mystery element? Yes. Sort of
(33) flawlessdreamer - Is it the book "the girl with the dragon tattoo"? No
(34) 13Ice - Was the book written before the year 1950? No
(35) avoran - Based on the map below, is the book set mainly in Western Asia? [I'm sorry but I can't see the map. No, the book is not set in West Asia]
(36) Zoie - Was the book written before the year 1999? Yes
(37) drnaveed - Is the book setting in South Asia? No
(38) wtman - are you Yamasaki Asami from Audition by Ryū Murakami? No
(39) avoran - Based on the same map (which you might also be able to see at the link below, 2nd map on the page) is the book set mainly in East Asia? Yes
(40) profprofessorson - Are you a character in a manga? No
(41) drnaveed - Was the book written in chinese ? No
(42) agamal007 - Was the book written in Japanese ? Yes
(43) avoran - Does the author's surname (family name) in English start with a letter between M and Z? No
(44) 13Ice - Was the book written before the year 1975? No
(45) wtman - are you a character from Naoko? Yes!

Add on : Answer to Question 31 was No because Naoko and her daughter travelled back to Noako's hometown to attend a funeral and it was on this trip that the accident happened.

[flawlessdreamer]

Are you human?

[avoran]

Are you (or were you) a real person?