Well, if you are going to pick a language just to benefit your Perl learning, and you just have the three mentioned languages to choose from, pick C++. (Better choices would be C, sh, AWK and Python).

However, if I were presented with those languages, and I had to pick one, I'd pick Cobol. Why? Because it isn't used as much as C++ or VB. Those languages you can learn for yourself, there are lots of books about them, gcc compiles C++, VB comes with the most popular OS. But it's harder to learn find resources to learn Cobol.

Furthermore, everyone quickly says that Cobol is rubbish. But it's good to know your heritage. Cobol was among the first high level programming languages, created in a time even assemblers weren't common place. Grace Hopper was one of the major designers/developers of Cobol. We wouldn't have languages like C, Perl or Java if it wasn't for those pioneer languages like Cobol. Even if it doesn't satisfy todays standards.

Abigail

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.