Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 9/29/24 4:00 PM, rbowman wrote:

On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 05:42:15 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
 

On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 01:28:01 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>

And COBOL is STILL with us, just under the skin. Lots of those 60s pgms
writ by narrow-tie horn-rim-glasses Dilberts STILL doing their thing.

>
They are disappearing, one way or the other. Companies that are still
insisting on sticking to that legacy code gradually going out of
business or being acquired, and having that technical-debt-ridden stuff
superseded by more modern stuff from the parent company ...
>
Do you think PayPal, Ebay or TradeMe use COBOL code to manage their
financial transactions? Of course not.

 How many government agencies, financial institution and so forth do you
think DON NOT have reams of legacy COBOL?

   I've agreed with him though that like so many old
   languages COBOL *will* eventually fade away. What
   replaces it may or may not be "better" but there
   just aren't many people willing/able to do COBOL
   anymore, so ....
   There's always a psychology in the computer world
   that immediately embraces the "Newest/Greatest Thing"
   whether it's actually good/improved or not. Shit, I
   remember when 'C' was in that category ... that one
   DID hang on  :-)
   There's a parallel thread here started by someone
   who hates "Rust". It too is one of those "newest/
   greatest things" so all the kiddies immediately
   jumped on it. IMHO it looks like yet another
   pointless re-do of 'C', so use 'C', but that's
   not how the newbies see it.
   But the EXPENSE of translating/replacing all that
   good old COBOL - that's a factor these days. The
   USA/west had gobs of cash in the 60s ... but NOT
   so much now.
   Oh, I gave him a wiki of computer langs, 99% of
   which were flash-in-the-pan. I did note that it
   FAILED to include BRAINFUCK - what a hideous
   oversight !!!  :-)
   Due to their audience, SOME langs are gonna hang on
   for a LONG time still. FORTRAN is one of those.
   Oh, the recent serious crap/attacks with M$ and
   cloud apps probably do NOT encourage biz/govt to
   be in such a hurry to replace their old in-house
   COBOL. It WORKS.  :-)
   A month or so ago I posted a news story that says
   the US IRS is STILL using 1960s hardware/software
   for a lot of its daily operations. Dunno WHO
   maintains the hardware - they must get HUGE money.
   . . .
   "It is Cyrillic alphabet, like all the buttons
    you never push on a calculator !"