Re: Article on new mainframe use

According to Michael S  <already5chosen@yahoo.com>:

On Fri, 30 Aug 2024 14:28:17 GMT
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 01:12:23 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
 

According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid>:
 

But then, COBOL was never quite IBM’s thing ... 

 
Uh, on what planet?  IBM has had COBOL on their mainframes since
the 705 III. 

>
Umm, three-digit IBM model numbers were vacuum-tube machines, not
transistorized. COBOL dates from the transistor era. 

 
As usual, you are incorrect.   The Univac I was a vacuum tube
machine (valves for the right-ponders) and was used for COBOL
development (via FLOW-MATIC) by Admiral Hopper (whom I met
at ACM '80).

>
FLOW-MATIC influenced COBOL, but it's not the same language as COBOL.
Which does not mean that COBOL was not implemented on IBM 705 m3.

In the unlikely event anyone cares, here's the manual:

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7080/J28-6177-3_IBM_705_7080_Programming_Systems_COBOL_Additional_Specifications_Apr64.pdf

I can easily believe they wrote COBOL on the 7080 and then backported it to the 705, but so what?

The original question whether "COBOL was never quite IBM's thing" and it is obvious to
anyone who spends five minutes looking that they supported it up and down the product
lines.  There was even COBOL for the 1401 which is pretty amazing considering how tiny
a 1401 was and it ran in 4000 characters of core.  You needed tapes or a disk but even so.

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