Yes you would have to render the latex into markdown or html to post it on a forum . This forum has latex ability, but it is limited.
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When I came on here and had a sook about my 65 key mechanical keyboard with trackpoint - someone mentioned “compose” and “Alt+Gr”…
I f-cking hate having to remember which “super” key to press next to what other key to do something… Then some of them torture you - it’s press+hold+release+2nd-key+3rd-key+release… Yeah you can ----------------- (expletives redacted before I could even type them!).
I like “vi”… that’s it - I don’t want to learn a new language of keystrokes…
Having ranted above - I did learn some new ones using MacOs over the last 5+ years… It still annoys me: the lame fallacy that MacOs is more user friendly…
WTF? You want a screen shot?
Windows / Linux - Screenshot
press f–king “PrtScr” (yeah - assuming your keyboard has Prt+Scr)…
MacOS?
Press Shift-CMD+F3 or F4… That’s untuitive???
I’d have dumped it ages ago if it wasn’t UNIX… (and I fully bought into - ONLY because it was UNIX!)
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Never knew Cobol would run on a PC. I will have to go read about it.
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Yes and on linux !
I have not taught or written cool code for 30 years dont even remember the structure now… getting old.
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I like the typo. 
I have heard for the past several years that you can write your own ticket if you want to write COBOL. There are so many million lines of COBOL that is critical in banking and health and government that needs to be maintained.
More recently it seems like AI will help update it or migrate away from it.
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Well spotted. Question is what did I really want to write ?
Cannot remember, told you getting old is no fun
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I would like to say I had fun learning COBOL, but I did not (actually, I’m not sure anyone really learns it or fully). Pascal was better to me and way more useful in my life and career (at that time anyway).
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I loved teaching turbo Pascal, also for me practical and functioning. Better than cobol, no just different.
My sole difficulty, I was teaching city and guilds 721 programming introduction, intermediate and then advanced exam levels, 99 % student pass rate within a 6 month period. But the final exam was to write a simple wordprocessor with line breaks, bold, italics underline. But to get the distinction it had to have a simple spell check. No student ever managed the concept needed. So instead of them taking that option in the exam, I made them take the other 2 exams possible as a replacement. Talking to other teachers in other centres non had ever managed it. They dropped it from the exam papers the following year.
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Same here.
I gave up emacs editor because of all the meta keys … like I dont need a 2 handed keystroke to move the cursor.
Those Ctrl-Alt-Shift things are off my agenda.
I cant even remember if it is F1 or Alt-F1 or Ctrl-Alt-F1 or whatever to get a console
I cant remember how to get out of accidental full screen mode
The one I can remember Ctrl-Shift-Bksp ( or is it Ctrl-Alt-Bksp) does not work any more.
It is called ‘Mono-key Syndrome’. A key feature of Linux for Geriatrics.
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When I was using the IBM360, the in language was Fortran. They tried to introduce PL/1 which was supposed to replace both Cobol and Fortran, but it never really càught on.
I stuck with Fortran on mainframes for years, and even on BSD Unix, but I eventually went to Pascal, and then C.
When R came along it made things so much easier with its vectorised operators and object oriented approach.
The interesting thing is that Fortran is still active in the scientific community. It has adapted and added modern features.
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I, for one, really like the compose key – I consider it a godsend. That being said, I have also got a keyboard layout with a third and fourth level of characters (which I actually use).
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Your language issues put a different face on it.
If you enjoy special characters, try programming in Julia … you can have them in variable names. I have seen entire Julia programs written with the Greek alphabet. You can have \pi indtead of pi
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I have never seen or used it, but just interested in why Julia… : "There’s no good reason, really. It just seemed like a pretty name. Good enough for me and better than boring C++ name shows no imagination.
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Hello Friends
As follows my 2 cents
- Practically no virus
- Fast and reliable
- Let old hardware work in peace for more time. It specially for 32 bits
- Diversity of distro (Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Peppermint, Ubuntu and more)
- Diversity of Tools for the same approach (Terminal/Terminator/Kitty, etc … GNOME KDE etc)
- Be cool when you use the terminal and commands
- Have fun working with script files
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Can I add … free OS and free apps and freedom to use them as you wish including using the code to write new programs.
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I hear COBOL has added modern features too. I haven’t touched it in decades. Maybe some day.
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It is Python like in its syntax and structure but faster in execution.
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There is a list of languages supported by Arch Linux
108 is a lot of languages to support
That does not include scripting languages.
Cobol is there.
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As for what I like about GNU/Linux:
It’s willing to conform to my preferred work flow, so I don’t have to conform to its!
I get to determine the ‘branding’ of my computer, unlike some OS developers.
I have access to MY choice of terminal- or GUI-based utilities to accomplish nearly anything on my system.
Most distributions never collect my usage data, and those that want to, clearly explain what, and why.
GNU/Linux implicitly respects my privacy
It most-always just works, even on my older Dell laptop that Windows crawled on
Did I say how much fun I have learning the ins and outs of unfamiliar technologies?
Did I say how satisfying it is when I figure out on my own how to make something new happen?
Most distributions are free for the download, and so are most of the apps
The package manager(s) for my distribution handles both OS and user-level software management/updates, unlike that other ‘dominant’ OS!
Well, here’s my list of reasons, off the top of my head. If I gave the subject some further consideration, I could probably double the size of my list, or I could simplify it by stating that I love everything about my Linux distribution.
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Why would anyone want to program in COBOL these days?
What’s the use of Julia?
EDIT:
Just asked AI. It seems many institutions still use COBOL for organization or financial things. Airlines, insurance companies, governments, all use COBOL. It’s good at quickly processing massive amounts of data. Julia, on the other hand, is good for scientific purposes, such as modelling and other computationally heavy tasks. It’s got the ease of python and the performance of a compiled language because it’s JIT compiled.
EDIT2:
Over here is a complete list of all characters you can access using the compose key. WARNING: it’s a lot. Yesyes, there are doubles (to provide multiple ways to access them).
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