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Replies: 23
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Hall of Famer [22257]
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110%er [5249]
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Updating old software on decades old hardware just puts
Apr 9, 2020, 10:17 AM
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a larger band-aid over things. You of course can't just switch to a new architecture, but dang, people need to get away from "I don't understand it, so I won't touch it"
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Orange Blooded [4086]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 12:53 PM
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It's a #### language, but unless you think you are going to get someone who wrote the code and is till current enough understanding what they wrote to look at error and know exactly where to go in the code to fix it, you aren't gaining anything by looking for retired COBOL programmers.
Any competent programmer could come up to speed on COBOL in a week. I don't know what they are teaching in school now for CS degrees, so you might need someone in their 40s or 50s to find someone competent.
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Rock Defender [53]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:17 PM
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"Any competent programmer could come up to speed on COBOL in a week. " - holy freaking cow Batman. You have won the Dumbest Post of thew Week with that statement.
You probably could not even learn the Divisions in a COBOL program in a week, nor understand how to use top-down approach, or Working Storage and what goes in that area, or how to accurately use subroutines, or... Oh good grief, I am at a loss for words after reading your post.
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Legend [18407]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:21 PM
[ in reply to Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another ] |
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This may be the most ludicrous story to come out of this... You're talking months if not years. It's not the Cobol anyway, it's the interfaces and servers that are going to the mainframes. The mainframes can handle the volume but not the pipes going into it.
Btw- SC DEW outsourced theirs to some chicken little company for millions of$$$ . get what you pay for. We'd have been fine if you'd stuck with DTO.
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Rock Defender [53]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:21 PM
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I'm not turning off my ad blocker to read that article from the UK.
I'm retired and haven't coded COBOL in 20 years, and I could still fix any COBOL program unless it's total spaghetti code that needs a complete re-write.
I made Director of IT by being efficient using COBOL. I chose "Quick and CLEAN" code over "Quick and DIRTY" code that they called it back in the day. 
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Legend [18407]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:22 PM
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By the way dark side, you never responded to me on the thread you removed.
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Rock Defender [53]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:27 PM
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I used to love the creative code that old COBOL programmers used to place in their programs.
"Perform Find-end-of-file until #### freezes over".
"Perform Give-me-a-raise until The-boss-finds-out".
Ok - I just made those up, but there were many that kept it from ever being boring (even though very 'wordy' and computer-intensive). You never knew when you would encounter someone's inner thoughts injected into the code.
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Legend [18407]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:51 PM
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You got that right. There's a reason it's still in use though. You can do a lot of stuff well..
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Orange Blooded [3348]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:45 PM
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We updated an old Fortran based platform our whole business is built around about 10 years ago to a Windows based program. It took a team of about 15 employees 3 years to make the transition and when we were done, the 'new' software was already outdated. That's a huge investment for something that's outdated before it even hits the street. Now it takes twice the number of programmers to maintain as the old system. The company we bought the software from recently told us they're no longer going to support our version and we'll have to go through a similar level of effort to transition to the new version. We have to do all the programming in-house for security reasons. In hindsight, we may have been better off if we had just stuck with archaic Fortran software like the white-haired programmers recommended before retiring years ago and let new employees teach themselves Fortran.
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Legend [18407]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 1:54 PM
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Amen... Been there too. Millions and millions wasted.
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Orange Blooded [3130]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 6:37 PM
[ in reply to Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another ] |
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I haven't thought about Fortran in ...days... since I watched "Hidden Figures" a couple of nights ago. I have no idea how those ladies taught themselves. It's amazing that I'm not STILL sitting in Martin Hall trying to get through that class.
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Rock Defender [53]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 9:20 PM
[ in reply to Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another ] |
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Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) had a special advantage over most other languages in that it was ideal for crunching huge volumes of numbers/stats/etc. I don't know of any languages that are in use today that excel in that specific task like Fortran can do. Shoulda listened to the old white haired guys.
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Hall of Famer [22257]
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I started CU in 1975. Back then they didn't even offer a Computer
Apr 9, 2020, 7:22 PM
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Science major, you had to major in Math and get the Comp Sci option or minor. I took Assembly Language, Fortran & Cobol. You typed up cards, each card was a line of code, then ran em thru the card reader and waited for the printer output to see if there were errors or ran correctly. Spent many a night in the basement of Martin trying to get a program to compile and run.
In the 80's I worked for a company that did cable TV software. It ran on the DEC/VAX VMS platform and the language was DIBOL... Digital's own little flavor of COBOL.
Oh, I still have my Fortran class book:
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Rock Defender [53]
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Re: I started CU in 1975. Back then they didn't even offer a Computer
Apr 9, 2020, 9:25 PM
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I think I still have mine too. Professor Hind taught me Fortran. My wife keeps telling me to get rid of those old books, rat hat, slide rule, etc.
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Hall of Famer [22257]
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Yes! Professor Hind, I would've never remembered that if you hadn't
Apr 9, 2020, 9:49 PM
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mentioned his name. Who was the dude who taught COBOL? Tall, kinda weird looking guy with a disheveled look. The final project was about "Zeus Burgers" and you had all semester to work on it.
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Legend [16472]
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CU Guru [1577]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 8:19 PM
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Haven’t written cobol code in 30 years. Every now and then maybe once a year, someone will call me to update an old legacy system. I use to refer them to my old boss back in the 80’s who still had some banks as clients who probably till this day use cobol. RPG is in the same boat. A lot of companies invested in midrange IBM’s in the 70’s and 80’s. IBM midranges can also run cobol. The AS400 COBOL is used by many universities.
Admiral Grace Hopper was the ground floor architect of the language. We referred to as the grandmother of cobol. She also created the term nano second. I met her when I was in boot camp in Orlando.
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Rock Defender [53]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 9:23 PM
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For years I kept the "nano second" that Grace Hopper gave to me at a meeting in Greenville. Her nano second was a piece of wire, about 1 foot long, representing how far light can travel in one nano second. An amazing woman, and ahead of her time.
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CU Guru [1577]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 9:29 PM
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OL: that’s very cool. I went to computer school in the Navy. I can guarantee you once I lose my mind, I will never forget her name. We saw many videos with her being the instructor. I can see her on the screen now with a piece of wire.
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Orange Blooded [4896]
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I work in software (not a programmer) but helped my daughter apply
Apr 9, 2020, 8:29 PM
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For unemployment. The DEW system is absolutely the worst online system I have ever used - going back 20+years. And frankly doesn’t look that complicated (as far as what it actually does). They should just blow it up. A competent team of 3-4 programmers could likely rewrite it in less time than it would take COBOL programmers to understand and fix it.
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Walk-On [123]
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Re: LOL ... those old COBOL programmers are gonna get another
Apr 9, 2020, 9:00 PM
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Brings back memories. Took COBOL at Clemson back in 1985.
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Hall of Famer [22257]
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OK, I'll show my age here. In the mid-80s, I'd show up at a cable TV
Apr 9, 2020, 10:49 PM
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company and have to do a total install from scratch. It was a blank machine, a DEC/VAX minicomputer that I literally took out of the box. I'd install the O/S first, OpenVMS, which would compare to MS Windows nowadays. It took several tapes and hours to do this. By tapes I mean TK50 cassettes. Then I'd load our base code. Then I'd load the custom software. And then start loading the converted data... this was multiple "tapes/cassettes" because it was all of their historical data. The history. Millions of transactions going back for years.
Every single cable TV subscriber and every charge, payment, prorate, Pay-Per-View purchase, HBO adds/drops, etc, disconnects/reconnects, everything. They had to have that. And it needed to match to the penny to their existing system, which they were still running parallel before switching over. Good lord, it was always a cluster. Monthly charges in date fields. Last Name in the Address field. You name it. It was always hosed. And I'd spend the first week just trying to straighten out the data.
All nighters. Working 48 or 72 hours straight, whatever it took. And I made all the cables too. A terminal cable was different from a modem cable vs a printer cable. I had to know which wires went where and use crimper tools to create the right RS-232 clips. And then run the cables thru the ceiling or floor or whatever. And when I finally had everything working, the training classes would finally start. I'd typically spend at least a month getting them up and running.
Good times.
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110%er [5211]
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Sounds like I need to break out my old Fortran 77 book.***
Apr 10, 2020, 8:41 AM
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