Original: In his dissenting response to Dijkstra 's article and the above '' offensive statement '' , computer scientist Howard E. Tompkins defended structured COBOL : '' COBOL programs with convoluted control flow indeed tend to ` cripple the mind ' '' , but this was because '' there are too many such business application programs written by programmers that have never had the benefit of structured COBOL taught well ... '' .
Simplified: The computer scientist Howard E. Tompkins disagreed , and defended structured COBOL : '' COBOL programs with convoluted control flow indeed tend to ` cripple the mind ' '' , but this was because '' there are too many such business application programs written by programmers that have never had the benefit of structured COBOL taught well ... '' .