I said closest equivalents, not close. And, in terms of understanding a 1975 comment with 2012 language comparisons, I challenge you to do better.
As for Java, it, like COBOL, was intentionally designed from the start to subtly restrict programmers so that large groups could work together on extremely portable programs. Both became popular in lots of "boring business applications" that will live forever. And if you think that current opinions about Java are dissimilar from old opinions about COBOL, you need to get out of your echo chamber and learn what adherents of various scripting languages think about Java. If you're tempted to retort that there are more Java programmers than scripting programmers, and Java programmers like the language, a 1975 COBOL programmer could justifiably have said the same thing.
The Perl vs PL/I comparison is not original to me. A bit over a decade ago MJD took a 1967 description of PL/I, did word substitution, and came up with http://perl.plover.com/perl67.html. The description fits - both languages combined several previous ones in an idiosyncratic way, with a strong emphasis on making it easy to get stuff done. The result in both cases was a language which made it easy for "sysadmin types" to solve real problems, with solutions that in time could become problems of their own.
The FORTRAN to C comparison is, admittedly, unfair as languages. But both have the characteristic of being low-level languages that are not (by current standards) very expressive, with large established code bases, riddled with repetitive mistakes that cause problems.
You admit that BASIC to PHP is better. If you think that I have failed to give the PHP language, core library, and community the full iota of respect that they deserve, then I likewise believe that you fail to give Kemeny and Kurtz full respect for deciding in the early 60s that computing was going to be a universal right, and there needed to be a programming language, for non-programmers, that would let them unleash that potential. And then designing a language that successfully served that purpose for decades.
And that productive people continue to get amazing stuff done with all of these technologies, and that starting over from scratch in any of theses areas would be far harder than critics would like to admit.
As for Java, it, like COBOL, was intentionally designed from the start to subtly restrict programmers so that large groups could work together on extremely portable programs. Both became popular in lots of "boring business applications" that will live forever. And if you think that current opinions about Java are dissimilar from old opinions about COBOL, you need to get out of your echo chamber and learn what adherents of various scripting languages think about Java. If you're tempted to retort that there are more Java programmers than scripting programmers, and Java programmers like the language, a 1975 COBOL programmer could justifiably have said the same thing.
The Perl vs PL/I comparison is not original to me. A bit over a decade ago MJD took a 1967 description of PL/I, did word substitution, and came up with http://perl.plover.com/perl67.html. The description fits - both languages combined several previous ones in an idiosyncratic way, with a strong emphasis on making it easy to get stuff done. The result in both cases was a language which made it easy for "sysadmin types" to solve real problems, with solutions that in time could become problems of their own.
The FORTRAN to C comparison is, admittedly, unfair as languages. But both have the characteristic of being low-level languages that are not (by current standards) very expressive, with large established code bases, riddled with repetitive mistakes that cause problems.
You admit that BASIC to PHP is better. If you think that I have failed to give the PHP language, core library, and community the full iota of respect that they deserve, then I likewise believe that you fail to give Kemeny and Kurtz full respect for deciding in the early 60s that computing was going to be a universal right, and there needed to be a programming language, for non-programmers, that would let them unleash that potential. And then designing a language that successfully served that purpose for decades.