Indeed, starting to commit or do someone a favor "quickly" can quickly ruin a day or even a weekend. It can even lead to additional work for the next few working days.
Thank you for your response. I was curious to know whether COBOL (and all the other languages from that era) still had real professional value worth seriously exploring. I’ve often been interested in older languages for learning purposes, but I actually rushed through APL too quickly. I had looked at some source code and initially thought it was an exotic programming language because of the many special characters I saw. But I was wrong—this language is quite well-designed and powerful. I'll take a closer look at it; it also seems interesting.
In the past, it was possible to create truly innovative languages, but that is very rarely the case now. We are constantly bound by industrial standards, from syntax to functionality.
Thank you for your response. After reading all these replies, I clearly understood that COBOL is not as accessible as it might seem from a (very) distant professional perspective. I was just curious to learn more. However, these posts mention quite a lot that it is still a good language to learn.
Thank you for your response. Actually, I don't really intend to pursue a professional career in COBOL; it was more of an excuse to learn a new, rather old language that interested me, just like many other programming languages I’d like to explore. However, it was still interesting to know what would await me if one day, on a whim, I developed a deep passion for this particular language. COBOL is still a part of computing history, and it’s only fair to draw knowledge from it.
Thank you for getting involved in this great advice. I knew I wasn’t actually going to pursue a professional career in COBOL; in fact, it was just a way to justify my learning of this language and even other languages from the same era. I'm trying to immerse myself in the mindset of programmers from that time, in addition to everything modern today. I have a certain fascination for old things that have been abandoned—it’s often a legacy that shouldn’t be ignored, especially if it took a long time to develop or if it has matured significantly. It would be quite narrow-minded not to take an interest in what was done in the past to satisfy one's thirst for learning. But COBOL itself would really be my last option if I had to look for a job, though it’s still worth paying attention to its market demand. Fortunately, there are many other jobs in programming.
Thank you again for contributing to my growth in both computing and professionalism—I’m still far from reaching the end of my learning journey.
In the end, I was right to make this post.
I've been interested in Lisp before, but Clojure seems to be a more widely used and active version. I'd have to learn it again; the syntax is quite interesting.
My goal is to create micro SaaS with unique functionality under the name of my organization and following its niche, i.e. web and software development. So our paid software will surely allow cloud/AI services or even project organization for freelancer/startup.
Your observations are relevant. It's clear that the valuation of software engineering varies between companies, which can be frustrating for enthusiasts of the field. As for the education system, it does not seem to provide adequate preparation for the practical and commercial aspects of the profession.
I preferred not to do a survey because I think there are too many IDEs and choices to put between 4 answers and then it leaves people the opportunity to argue and talk about their answer. The goal was not to keep score for each IDE/text-editor but just to see what people personally use and for which language.
Otherwise I also like JetBrains but it is very heavy and slow sometimes (on my computer), and then I also like using vim or micro.
I personally thank everyone in the comment area who shared and will share their adventures with programming, their advice, their sources of learning. I can't answer everything but in any case I've read them all. I saw that it did people good to remember memories from up to 60 years ago and to share them with other people. I learned things.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us, your experiences with Python and its libraries. It was a pleasure to see that not so long ago, still teenagers were also motivated to learn paradigms and programming.