Posted on 04/18/2016 3:09:17 AM PDT by AdmSmith
The article is interesting. It’s basically a “how to” article to try to convince younger IT workers to sign up to work on legacy mainframe systems.
I bet that’s a pretty hard sell. No one in the computer industry would take seriously a manager making an offer like that, the days of company loyalty are long gone, killed off by management practices.
As a programmer your first job is to keep your skills up to date so that when you are laid off you can quickly acquire a new job. Working on some companies ancient mainframe code doesn’t fit into that model.
You nailed it!
There was an interesting essay written by someone talking about OO being the "Kingdom of the Nouns". Basically you can't do anything (no verbs) unless you attach it to an object (noun). And there's lots of times you would just like code to do something.
“I remember that Star Trek game! It was great.”
I was introduced to that game on an HP 2000 system. Learned BASIC on it. I think I still have a print out of it.
Good old ALC... those were the days. Many times coding a change might take only 30 minutes, but the program was now large enough to need another base register. Since all the other registers were already in use you spent three more days slimming down all the old code.
I remember running Basic from a terminal connected to the mainframe somewhere else in the building in our school. I was trying out each of the commands in the Basic manual. I remember working my way down to a command that messaged the system operator. I was rather shocked to realize I'd contacted a human when after typing in the command I got back a message "what do you want?".
OMG, I remember playing that game on my HP terminal back in the '80s.
The one that sticks in my memory - I to dock at a Star Base to refuel and rearm, but I came in too fast and wrecked the place. They declared me a renegade, closed all other Star Bases to me. I wandered around their universe for aid util my fuel ran out, and alas . . .
How I long for a simple PSET command that will put a dot on the screen so you can graph something wthout having to kill yourself.
I have a personal dialect of Lua that lets me draw graphs in the fashion of a Tek4010. I have variants that run on Windows (scribbling all over a command window), Linux (either directly on the frame buffer or in an X window) and VMS (either ReGIS to a DECterm or, again, in an X window).
I find it very useful. My cow-orkers range from amused by it to indifferent.
I once acquired a program, Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique, abbreviated GERT. I had the program on punched cards in a box labeled GERT DECK. One day my wife saw it and asked, "Who is Gert Deck?" She accepted my explanation.
I speak COBOL and FORTRAN, I am available :)
It’s been decades since I programed in COBOL but as I recall COBOL had primitive data objects, kindof like structures in C. Impressive considering COBOL evolved in the 50s.
They say you never forget your first compiler.
It's true.
https://wg5-fortran.org/f202x.html
Remember the old days when debugging was an art https://twitter.com/KiwiEV/status/1404476456277659651
TTTTJ
Did Fortran in college circa 1975. And yes punch cards were definitely involved. Much later messed around with VMS, MVS, PLx and Rexx at IBM on the 390. Super glad I can use modern tech in my day job now!
I headed a paper recycling drive in 1974, collected 42,000 pounds of punch cards from the comp sci basement at ISU.
No fun carrying punch cards around campus in the winter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.