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 ... '' One cause of spaghetti code was the statement .
The computer scientist who was named 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 ... '' .