Off-topic- acronyms (was Re: [Israel.pm] Essay: The Joy of Perl)

[Jason Elbaum]

> I guess I grew up in an age when only various subspecies of technically
> inclined people even KNEW what Cobol (or COBOL) was AND what it means.

The issue in the NYTimes stylebook isn't whether or not people know what 
it means, just whether or not it's pronounced as a word.

Of course, many of us grew up in an "age" when many common computer 
systems couldn't handle lowercase letters, so anything computer-related 
was uppercase, acronym or not.

Officially, FORTRAN started calling itself Fortran with the Fortran 90 
standard.

(You're right about Perl being a retroactive acronym...)


Regards,

Jason