I picked this book up on a whim when it was on a free shelf outside a store in a tiny town in New Mexico. I was intrigued by a book about programming from 1976 with a cover that gave a feeling of downright whimsy; cherubs, intricate ornamental patterns along the border. And even the title: "COBOL with Style" gave it a more modern feel. Most older programming books I have encountered have a much dryer, matter-of-fact presentation, setting out to teach you the facts of the language.

Though I've never written a line of COBOL in my life, and never plan to, I decided to read this anyway and I was pleasantly surprised by how much of it felt applicable. It spends most of the first half encouraging you not to just jump into programming, but spending time upfront assessing and fleshing out the actual problem, planning your approach in pseudo-code, and determining your documentation strategy. Then the advice about writing code is mostly about using meaningful variable names, structuring your code with module to make it easier to read, and other strategies for making it easy for others to understand the code.

Anyway, it was an interesting read, giving me a peak into what it must have been like for COBOL programmers, and just how long some ideas about good programming have been around.