In the beginning there was ENIAC.
(to be continued ... maybe)
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.