more modern programming languages are easier to learn than C++, but they’re also slower as a result of being further abstracted from the hardware.
honestly everyone should just learn to program in x86/64 assembly, just get right up on the metal, oooh yeah that’s what i’m talkin about
I’ve been doing 6809 assembly myself lately…hic!
Cobol is an old language for writing databases.
WOW has too much spaghetti code to care about performance.
There are newer languages, but the thing that you run up against is speed.
The more abstract and further from assembly a language is, the slower it runs, basically. But the closer to assembly it is, the more opaque and difficult to work with it is.
C++ is in the sweet spot. We have plenty of more abstracted languages these days that are easier to use and work perfectly fine for most things, but if you want real hardcore performance (which games tend to), C++ is where it’s at.
edit; and I see Gaahr already said this.
Data processing actually not databases as per the wiki.
“COBOL was designed in 1959 by CODASYL and was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC designed by Grace Hopper. It was created as part of a US Department of Defense effort to create a portable programming language for data processing. It was originally seen as a stopgap, but 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.”
It certainly can be used with databases today but back in the 60’s I don’t think there were to many databases like we think of today…hic!
You’d be amazed. I read a post from one of the Stellaris tech people last year about how some of their backend worked (in this case related to loading mods) and they mentioned that they forked the tool they were using specifically to update it from C to C++. Some poor saps are probably still using it out of the box…
Go home COBOL, you’re drunk. 
i know a little bit of 65816 assembly but that’s because i occasionally do silly things with SNES romhacks
Did you make this thread just to make this joke? Cuz mad props to you if you did. Thats cheesy as heck and I love it.
Shush now missy! I already wrote a COBOL program that reads it’s source file in and dumps it out to the screen…hic!
Just wanted to mention that during the 1980s I bought many a computing magazine just for the type-in programs. It’s how I learned BASIC, which I still dabble with on occasion on Visual Studio and various computer emulators.
Also, when I left the Army in 2011, many of their legacy systems still ran UNIX and DOS
What’s crazy is there’s a lot of financial institutions that use COBOL still… which creates some interesting dynamics with people retiring
I’ve been tinkering with a Radio Shack Color Computer 3. I snagged LW Tools 4.17 with LWASM for assembling things and used Toolshed 2.2 to make the CoCo disk image files for an SD card cartridge I use. Works great so far for real hardware after I get done doing some initial testing on VCC…hic!
In my day, ancient as I am, they were very proud of switching to C++ from BASIC in my super intro programming “Hello world” class.
Then I remember later on having to take another class and being brainwashed about Java, Java, Java… Java everything don’t even mention C or C++.
I just figured at that rate things were changing the tech ball would’ve kept on rolling, but apparently, like you say, they found their sweet spot.
Yeah. I remember when I was in college everyone was talking about how great Java was and how everything would switch to it.
Then we actually used Java for a while.
I used to like tinkering with Java till all those damn frameworks came out. Christ you need a framework to make web pages even. As fun as Eclipse can be to use the damn thing breaks on it’s own every now and then with nothing touching it and I have to reinstall the whole damn thing…hic!
Frick Java. It’s still just as miserable now as it was back then. C# is where it’s at.
Java is a dumb language. FORTRAN is better.
i love C# but that language is so stupid thicc you can’t use it for anything too serious
the original icefury engine that wow classic used probably had some COBOL in it ; COBOL was everywhere in the 80’s and early 90’s.
strongly doubt there’s much COBOL left in modern wow, unless they did 0 refactoring in all those years.
edit: icefury… the warcraft 1 engine…