Cobol (bp coyle)

It took me six months to even say ‘hi’ to her.

Liz was the prettiest girl I had ever seen, way out of my league.  I wasn’t exactly brimming with self-confidence at eighteen.

We had already learned Basic and RPG 3 and she had excelled at both while I had done okay at best.

However everything changed when we began to learn Cobol, I really took to it. There was something elegant about it. It allowed artistic expression to be mixed with problem solving. Unlike the other languages, she was finding it difficult. Our, oh so very kind, tutor paired us together for an assignment. That really gave me no choice. I had to say ‘hi’.

I patiently explained it all to her, guided her as she wrote code. Our project was the best in the class.  She came out of it confident and capable at Cobol.

But besides ‘hi’ and other polite expressions, we never said a word not computer related.

The lesson I learned was that I was good at teaching computer languages, but crap at interacting with pretty girls.

Thirty years later, I am a lonely professor of computing. I guess some things cannot be learned.

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