Posted on 02/12/2025 12:55:26 PM PST by mairdie
...
The problem with that starts with the fact that it's not in a database. It's a wildly heterogeneous collection of different databases, ISAM files, and card images, and I would bet money that a lot of it is on old 7-track tapes. Some of these are probably stored in Iron Mountain or a similar installation. Also, some of the data may still be just on paper, as, apparently, government retirement records are.
So what Big Balls and the other wizards are going to need to do to start with is find the data.
I'm willing to bet there's no single catalog of all the data sets. Having found the data, much of it is card images that almost certainly are only documented by COBOL copybooks. (Back in 2020, I wrote about COBOL for the Stack Overflow Blog when it suddenly became trendy as some of these systems desperately needed to be maintained.)
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Clapping madly.
Mid 80’s I moved to IBM Research and got involved with Lisp after that. IBM was always big on Not Invented Here so we had our own version. Started another newsletter and organization for Lisp before I pulled that one into SIGPLAN, too. Never enjoyed the language, myself, though my husband has always been passionate about it. But LOVED the people.
http://www.iment.com/maida/computer/lisp-ptrs/lp-i.1.toc.htm
X3J13 Common Lisp - Jun 1989 - San Jose - Joseph Blanchard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvU3pJbZBj0
I LOVE history of computers. I had Captain Grace Hopper in to give a talk on the Archeology of Computers and she was fascinating talking about the techniques that were lost as people forgot what they did in the “old days” as memory became expansive and cheap. She was suggesting the old techniques could become useful again as new devices came in with restricted memory. Saluted at the end in her nifty Navy uniform. My hero!
COBOL copybooks.
Don’t forget the 88’s and Redefines.
They purchased the Exxon computer because they were so happy with their Exxon Qwip machine...a kind of proto fax.
You could only sent letter sized documents. You had to roll the original on a kind of rotating drum. It took about 5 minutes to send a page.
Early on I worked at the Systems Development Group at U of Chicago on an IBM 7094 in assembly language. 3 letter commands like ZAP (Zero and Add Packed). To this day I flash on the game of looking for commands on passing license plates when I’m out driving.
I worked for Unisys for 10 years.
The fed computer networks were soo old and bad.
1000’s of IBM PS2’s so full of dust a hoover vacuum would be jealous...
My former co-worker, Mark Watson, has a nice book titled, "Loving LISP". Mark continues to update the book adding more useful content.
I am very much impressed at your contributions to the languages in use today. Your work contributed about the same time as the likes of Dennis Ritchie, Bjarne Stroustrup and Betrand Meyer and David Korn. I had the pleasure of meeting all 4 at software development conferences. Thank you for your efforts.
Yes, I’d sit with a POO book in my lap.
I always liked looking at the Assembly output of the COBOL programs. You could pick up a few tricks.
I later started working on WANG computer doing Assembly. It was exactly the same as 370 with a few extra instructions and in ASCII instead of EBCIDC.
HEX Dumps,
Now there is a good time, especially when they are printed on a 12” stack of paper.
Yea, ISAM. Better off reading them by blocks. There’s enough memory now.
My UNISYS work on 1100 systems ran from 1983 to 1986. At that point, I moved to another project replacing rooms full of DEC 11/780 machines running COSNIX with UNISYS/7000 (CCI Power 6/32) processors. Demand paged virtual was a big win. I had to do lots of kernel fixes before it was satisfactory for deployment across the Bell System. One of my favorites was fixing the kernel CPU scheduling algorithm. It ran like a dog when doing batch processing. The algorithm was BSD tilted in favor of interactive use. We had linemen hanging off poles for an hour waiting for processes to finish. I sent my improvement to the manufacturer in Irvine, CA for their staff to evaluate. The report back was a "new problem". Their system had 100 dialups and never had more than 3 in use because of the terrible performance. The "new problem" was busy signals. All 100 lines were in use and the machine was performing with no discernible latency. It was a big improvement. To get it rolled out to the other BOCs, they had to name it the "Bellcore scheduler". My little operation at PacBell didn't have the reputation.
I’m racking my brain trying to remember where I heard the joke and exactly what it was. Senior moments. But it was something about when COBOL was invented by committee they were rich enough to be able to eat at fancy restaurants, but only ate hamburger at every meal. The designers of Lisp ate only tea and toast and the designers of APL ate only bread and water. Anyone remember that joke and where it started?
Admiral
Later, yes. I drove her to the airport and she gave me a paper showing who I should thank for paying her way and exactly what I should write in my letters to them. Incredible lady.
Computer systems don’t pay union dues, bureaucrats do.
That’s why they modernize at a glacial pace.
Trump needs to decertify public employee unions.
COBOL was invented, specified, coded, and tested by a team of women who worked for Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. Government workers were not rich in those days.
I had the extreme pleasure working for one of "Grace's Girls" in 1976. She was a funny lady, and really smart. Her function on the team was validating the proper functioning of arithmetic computations emitted by the compiler.
Oh, that’s different! It dates you, too. ;-D
I’m always happy to date myself. 80 years young and still going.
LOVE IT!!! Being close to history is exciting.
Grace Hopper
Developed the A-0 compiler, which translated English-like code into machine-readable binary code
Co-developed COBOL, a standardized computer language that’s still used today
Coined the term “bug” to describe a computer error
Known as the “Mother of COBOL”
Jean Sammet
Helped develop COBOL in 1959
Developed FORMAC, a computer language for symbolic manipulation of mathematical formulas
Served as the first female president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 1974 to 1976
Received the IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award in 2009
Hopper and Sammet were both trailblazers in the field of computer science. Hopper’s work influenced the development of modern programming languages, while Sammet’s work helped make programming more accessible
*******
Grace also said she was responsible for computers going from octal to digital when she realized she’d tried to balance her checkbook in octal.
I'll tell you a funny story about Charlene. First, she was not attractive by any stretch of the imagination. None of us guys cared. She was hired by our company to improve the development process.
We were all out to lunch together, and we got her to talk about the FORTRAN project. She laughed, and then said, "I supposed you noticed that I am just down right homely. Grace hired us for our brains, not our looks. You may be astonished to learn that the rest of the girls were very jealous of me, since I was the best looking one in the bunch".
She had a green porcelain frog on her desk, with "I'm so happy I could just shit", on the base pedestal. You never could anticipate what she'd say or do next. She was magnificent.
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