Could you explain more? Are you talking about my examples o FORTRAN and Algol code? My point was not to suggest you could easily read it but that the syntax is not nearly as obscure an do arcane as people may think.

I would argue almost everything you see there contains elements you would be familiar with in newer programming languages. If you truly wanted to read some old code then the syntax would likely not be the key obstacle. You could probably figure that out in a couple of days. The challenge would be the concepts used in the code. The naming of things etc. Try reading some random scientific C++ code. It is not easy unless you know the context. The libraries used, the kind of problem being solved etc.

If you still disagree, then please give me some code snippets from the examples you think is very trick to understand. It is easier to walk through a concrete example than talk in the abstract.