If you look at this NJ press conference on You-Tube, one of the commenters there says "My husband is a Cobol IBM OS 390 programmer with 20 years of experience in Warsaw, Poland, working for one of the biggest Polish banks and his hourly rate is 15 dollars gross. It seems he volunteers all the time..."
On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 3:24 PM Robert Bernecky <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, Joey, > > If you believe the closed captioning (Always a bad idea...), > he was saying COBALT. > > The first job I had at I.P. Sharp Associates, working for Roger D. Moore, > was brown-thumbing the IPSCOBOL compiler, then under development > and, mostly, working. Most of my efforts went into the area that > Roger had least confidence in, the "mover". This part of the compiler > was responsible for converting between COBOL's myriad data types, > e.g., Zoned Floating Point to Packed Roman Numeral. Given a myriad > data types, that meant I had to come up with myriad×myriad unit tests. > > There were enough of these that I ended up learning APL, at Roger's > suggestion, to generate unit tests and check results. That mostly > worked, but the latter part often took a Very Long Time. Roger > and I looked at my efforts, and he conjectured that > dyadic iota (x⍳y) was the bottleneck. A look at the source code > confirmed that the algorithm in question was of quadratic complexity. > Roger's "suggestion" on how to deal with this was: "Fix it.", by which > he meant the APL interpreter. Which I did, designing and implementing > several linear-time algorithms for epsilon and iota. That led to my > first-ever technical paper, at APL73, which looks very clearly > to me like a first-ever... Luckily, my knee-shaking stage fright and > trepidation > at the thought of giving a talk before hundreds of people at the conference > was eased by a minute or two of pre-presentation coaching by > the session chair, a kindly gentleman named Eugene McDonnell, AKA eem. > > Gene told me: > > - Don't worry about content: you know more about this than anybody in > the audience. > > - If you're nervous, pick somebody in the audience who you know, and > pretend you're talking one-on-one to them. You can even pick me, > if you like, > he said, with his usual winning smile. > > So I did, and it apparently went well. > > Many moons later (1990's, maybe), I got a call out of the blue from > a headhunter in Tennessee, looking for a COBOL consultant. > He told me that he had called me because I was highly > skilled in that area, and that there were not a lot of people with > expertise > there. That went like this: > > Me: I see. What are you offering as an hourly fee? > > Him: Well, you know that people are in great demand here, > so we are offering an excellent rate: $15USD/hour. > > Me: I pay my house cleaner more than that. Try appending a zero to > that rate. > > Him: {click} > > Bob > > On 2020-04-06 1:47 p.m., Joey K Tuttle wrote: > > I found the announcement video ( https://youtu.be/HSVgHlSTPYQ ) > > amusing, in that the "kid" making the announcement morphed COBOL > into > COBOLT (consistently). > > @bakerjd99 - Agree with your sentiment > about long overdue kudos for > the workhorses of the previous century. > > >> On 2020Apr 6, at 10:36, John Baker <[email protected]> wrote: >> > >> So can we blame COBOL for the head-up-the-anterior response we're >> > enjoying in the confused states of America? >> >> Just kidding - any > program that operates with minimal changes for >> decades has to be > respected. The old COBOLians are finally getting >> long overdue kudos. > >> >> For my social distancing command bunker - Cheers >> >> On Mon, > Apr 6, 2020 at 11:12 AM 'Jim Russell' via Chat >> <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >>> Many years ago, I prided myself on my COBOL skills; at one > point >>> I had about 50 COBOL programmers working for three supervisors > in >>> the COBOL coding shop I managed. >>> >>> When I worked more > recently for a then quite new Government >>> agency, I was distressed to > find that the Personnel/Payroll >>> systems were all COBOL based, still > relying on fixed position >>> ascii records. >>> >>>> On Apr 6, 2020, at > 12:50 PM, Skip Cave >>>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> Why > Covid-19 has resulted in New Jersey desperately needing >>>> COBOL > programmers. >>> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >>> >>> For information about J forums see > http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >>> >> >> >> -- John D. Baker [email protected] >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> >> For information about J forums see > http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > -- > Robert Bernecky > Snake Island Research Inc > 18 Fifth Street > Ward's Island > Toronto, Ontario M5J 2B9 > > [email protected] > tel: +1 416 203 0854 > text/cell: +1 416 996 4286 > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Devon McCormick, CFA Quantitative Consultant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
