Madam, - I enjoyed reading Karlin Lillington's article on computer programming (Business This week, March 18th). As a former programmer, I agree that computer programming languages have their own distinct beauty.
The trouble is, many of the computer systems in our major companies and financial institutions were written in the 1960s and 1970s, and have been patched up numerous times since then, often by programmers with no conception of elegant code, with the result that maintaining these systems is an extremely demoralising task.
However, it's good to know that your correspondent doesn't subscribe to the popular prejudice that computer programming is an occupation staffed exclusively by what are nowadays called nerds. - Yours, etc.,
JOE PATTON, Warren Avenue, Castleknock, Dublin 15.