Missing COBOL
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I almost had a brush with COBOL nearly half a lifetime ago. I was working days as a 2nd line technician in a college while my night job was development, including on the .net framework 1.0 beta. Some of the lecturers I supported were in charge of teaching basic programming to the students and we'd always have a chat about programming if there was a ticket that needed seeing to in their office. The one lady lecturer would not back down from her allegiance to COBOL, stating that "for working with files there is no better tool". Had I known then what I know now, I'd have replied "for putting your career in reverse while the rest of the world speeds past you there is no better tool". Over a decade on there's no way in the world that she's still sat in that office, beating the drum for COBOL, or is there? No, she's not. They knocked the building down several years ago.
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nearly half a lifetime ago ... the .net framework 1.0 beta
You must be very young. Half a lifetime ago for me Blériot had only just made it across the Channel! ;) [Edit: Apologies to Nagy for the accent in Louis' name.]
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits. - Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most. - I vaguely remember having a good memory...
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Actually I switched to the imaginatively named "PL/1" ("Programming Language One" - gosh, what an amazing name; when are we going to see "PL/2"?) which is like going from Heroine to Methadone! PL/1 was weird. It was like doing COBOL in FORTRAN. Thank god I was doing C on my own time to keep me sane!.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits. - Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most. - I vaguely remember having a good memory...
Me done PL/1. Me done all the functionals. #sniff#
Reality is an illusion caused by a lack of alcohol
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Actually I switched to the imaginatively named "PL/1" ("Programming Language One" - gosh, what an amazing name; when are we going to see "PL/2"?) which is like going from Heroine to Methadone! PL/1 was weird. It was like doing COBOL in FORTRAN. Thank god I was doing C on my own time to keep me sane!.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits. - Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most. - I vaguely remember having a good memory...
I used to use a PL/1 subset on Prime computers called SPL - it was pretty good
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ISAM for sure, but I can't fully agree with COBOL.
Reality is an illusion caused by a lack of alcohol
I can't fully agree with COBOL either - but at the moment anything seems better than what I am currently fighting against
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That only means they moved her and the cobol box to a new state of the art compute center
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
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I used to use a PL/1 subset on Prime computers called SPL - it was pretty good
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Prime computers
Good ol' Pr1me. I used to do FORTRAN on those.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits. - Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most. - I vaguely remember having a good memory...
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Prime computers
Good ol' Pr1me. I used to do FORTRAN on those.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits. - Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most. - I vaguely remember having a good memory...
I started on FORTRAN IV on them - then I discovered the SPL compiler and switched - weirdly the local library had a book devoted to translating FORTRAN IV to PL/1 - which was nice
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For the first time in 20 years I have been tasked with writing a line of business application - it uses C#, WPF, SQL Server and Entity Framework I really miss COBOL and ISAM files.
RugbyLeague wrote:
I really miss COBOL and ISAM files.
What the hell for???? I took 3 semesters of COBOL in college, and if I never did it again I would be quite happy.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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So the £30 million they spent on the new glass and brushed metal looking place has got a cupboard for an old 386? how thoughtful in this day and age..
no its a multi million pound super computer (it just emulates a 386)
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
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You missed out on a shed load of fun if you've never done COBOL. Imagine drunk s_x without the guilty feeling; or the s_x or getting drunk to start with.
Reality is an illusion caused by a lack of alcohol
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RugbyLeague wrote:
I really miss COBOL and ISAM files.
What the hell for???? I took 3 semesters of COBOL in college, and if I never did it again I would be quite happy.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
I have no intention of using it again - just sometimes I hark back to a simpler age
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Simplier? have you never dropped a box of punch cards?
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
TThat was before my time :-D
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I have no intention of using it again - just sometimes I hark back to a simpler age
Simplier? have you never dropped a box of punch cards?
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
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For the first time in 20 years I have been tasked with writing a line of business application - it uses C#, WPF, SQL Server and Entity Framework I really miss COBOL and ISAM files.
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For the first time in 20 years I have been tasked with writing a line of business application - it uses C#, WPF, SQL Server and Entity Framework I really miss COBOL and ISAM files.
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For the first time in 20 years I have been tasked with writing a line of business application - it uses C#, WPF, SQL Server and Entity Framework I really miss COBOL and ISAM files.
In my opinion, the main trouble with modern languages/frameworks/IDEs is the lack of good documentation, combined to their excessive size and complexity. You can't find primers that give you the basic recipes to get started. Instead you face unmanageable piles of uninformative, unstructured reference manuals. It was possible to learn Cobol. You will never really know C# nor WPF nor SQL Server nor Entity Framework. Programming has moved from a scientific discipline to a pathetic maze crossing. Sorry for the bad news ;-).
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In my opinion, the main trouble with modern languages/frameworks/IDEs is the lack of good documentation, combined to their excessive size and complexity. You can't find primers that give you the basic recipes to get started. Instead you face unmanageable piles of uninformative, unstructured reference manuals. It was possible to learn Cobol. You will never really know C# nor WPF nor SQL Server nor Entity Framework. Programming has moved from a scientific discipline to a pathetic maze crossing. Sorry for the bad news ;-).
I like to think I am pretty good at C# and WPF - I have written compilers in C# and award winning inverted index database software in C# with a WPF GUI - but I know what you mean. There's a lot of programming by Google done these days - and if you find 100 articles answering your question you'll generally find 100 conflicting answers.
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Actually I switched to the imaginatively named "PL/1" ("Programming Language One" - gosh, what an amazing name; when are we going to see "PL/2"?) which is like going from Heroine to Methadone! PL/1 was weird. It was like doing COBOL in FORTRAN. Thank god I was doing C on my own time to keep me sane!.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits. - Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most. - I vaguely remember having a good memory...
There was a cartoon at the time showing a COBOL Mum and a FORTRAN Dad cooing over their baby PL/1 offspring, while through the window, a whistling ALGOL Milkman was placing bottles on their doorstep.
All that is necessary for Evil to succeed is for Good Folks to keep voting for their Party. - Cornelius Thirp
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I thought that was LINC (Lucky its not cobol or Laugh I nearly Cried, as it was nicknamed )
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
When I was using it (LINC 4?), it generated 1000s of lines of COBOL which often compiled with errors. Corrections had to be made to the generated COBOL source, when you could work out what LINC was attempting.
Bergholt Stuttley Johnson wrote:
Laugh I nearly Cried
Too bloody right. :laugh:
All that is necessary for Evil to succeed is for Good Folks to keep voting for their Party. - Cornelius Thirp
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