My first few programming jobs was as a COBOL programmer on both Burroughs and IBM mainframes in the 1970s. I even was able to have lunch with Grace Hopper. In college I learned Fortran and BASIC. And pdp 8 assembler. I got a copy of the original K&R and learned C to wean me from COBOL. As a contractor I did have 1 COBOL assignment on HP-UX.
-- Jerry Feldman <gaf.li...@gmail.com> Boston Linux and Unix http://www.blu.org PGP key id: 6F6BB6E7 PGP Key fingerprint: 0EDC 2FF5 53A6 8EED 84D1 3050 5715 B88D 6F6 B B6E7 On Mon, Jan 6, 2020, 11:26 PM Bill Ricker <bill.n1...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 10:45 PM R. Anthony Lomartire < > opensourcek...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> So I recently landed a job working in COBOL on HP-UX. It's been a trip! >> > > HPUX is "interesting". > HP and IBM both made IT-friendly variants of Unix (previously it was just > an engineering OS; named "HPUX" and "AIX" respectively) long before POSIX > standardized the needed richer security/permissions features (e.g. ACLs), > and of course the other brands refused to bless either HPUX or AIX's > variations. So life is odd on either of them. I survived HPUX, and liked > AIX, when I had projects on them. > > This stuff is from before my time but it's been really interesting to >> learn. Have any of you folks worked with this stuff? >> > > Well yes. > I coached a couple of girlfriends through the COBOL assignment in their > Survey of Languages courses in '79-'80, using an already obsolete IBM 1401 > user manual, without having taken the course or studied COBOL more than > casual reading. (They both passed, and I'm still married to one of them!) > Then in 1981, i was paid to "write" (tweaked copy-pasta reuse) 2 lines > of COBOL on the TOPS-10 PDP-10 at DOT VOLPE center, to add field 13 A to > the processing for a form, after adding 13 A between 13 and 14 in the > Screen Painter and the DBMS schema. (And dump and reload the data of > course.) > (We were the Fortran department, but our previous DB guru was bilingual > and noticed that the Cobol/DP dept had gotten a Form-painter application > that worked on glass terminals in block mode, to get away from literally > keypunching data on cards, and it only supported COBOL -- would generate a > DATASECT and an object to link to; and our DBMS System 1022 also generated > a DATASECT for COBOL (and did similar for Fortran), so it was a small > matter of (pseudocode cobol) > CALL INPUT_FORM_ROUTINE > > IF <*validate input buffer field*> > COPY input7 TO output7 > ELSE SET ERROR_SEEN TO 1 > > > *... lather rinse repeat 1 to 17 ... and then insert 13A between 13 and 14 > after it's been in "production" for months.* > > CALL WRITE_OUTPUT_TO_DBMS > > The DEC PDP-10 had 36 bit words, so DEC TOPS COBOL had 6 x 6-bit ASCII > UPPER CASE CHARACTERS PER WORD. (WHO NEEDS LOWER CASE?) > DEC TOPS Fortran by contrast had discovered mixed case and had 5 x 7-bit > ASCII per word. (But the bit left over was mantissa lsb, not sign, so was > pretty much useless as a out of band marker.) > > We're looking to migrate away eventually, maybe anyone with experience >> there? I'd love to hear any stories about COBOL or old enterprise mainframe >> applications you've worked with. We're probably going to be hiring soon too >> if anyone would be interested in a similar gig. :) >> > > Early in the new century, my old financials shop was looking to replace > two overlapping business critical applications, one Mainframe COBOL and one > VMS COBOL, with something new. (We'd already replaced the PL/1 > application running on Stratus.) Eventually* instead of paying a vendor to > upgrade their Unix/Linux C++ app with Java UI to handle the needed > features, the vendor for the IBM M/F COBOL app added the features needed to > retire the VMS app. (I didn't directly touch the Mainframe, but dealt with > the problems of transferring LRECL EBCDIC files to CRLF ASCII Unix/Linux > hosts and vice versa, as well as App/OS/HW interface/capacity issues on > Unix/Linux platforms. Much hilarity with file transfers.) > > *Eventually = I think they finally finished?? > > -- > Bill Ricker > bill.n1...@gmail.com bric...@theperlshop.com > https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ >
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