A programming language that looks a lot like COBOL. Make that a 20 year old version of COBOL. It is derived from PL/B which is in turn derived from DATABUS which is in turn derived from dirt.

Some prime features of DB/C:

  • Extremely annoying commenting semantics
  • CASE INSENSITIVE CODE THAT LOOKS UGLY
  • Obscure, poorly named "Verbs" (functions)
  • state variables instead of return values? please.
  • No way to determine array lengths at run-time, thereby making arrays nearly un-usable
  • No formal arugment passing mechanism to "function calls"
  • No variable scoping
  • No garbage collection
  • GOTO
  • An array is your most complex data structure (and it can only be 3 dimensional at best)
More positive things could be said about DB/C if professional programmers could bear to code in it for more than 15 minutes without bashing their faces repeatedly against blunt objects until unconcious.