> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of john gilmore
>
> I like David Farber's (of course impolitic) 'vacuum tubes' analogy.
>
> From this morning's New York Times:
>
> But the California controller, John Chiang, says the state's
> payroll system - which uses a programming throwback known as
> Cobol, or Common Business-Oriented Language - is so
> antiquated it would take months to make the changes to
> workers' checks.
Apparently the required/desired changes involve significantly more than
"just the numbers".
> "In 2003, my office tried to see if we could reconfigure our
> system to do such a task," Mr. Chiang told a State Senate
> committee on Monday. "And after 12 months, we stopped without
> a feasible solution."
>
> David J. Farber, a computer science professor at Carnegie
> Mellon University, said using Cobol was roughly equivalent to
> having "a television with vacuum tubes."
Not quite the best analogy: Vacuum tubes do "wear out", but COBOL does
not.
> "There are no Cobol programmers around anymore," Mr. Farber
> said. "They retired centuries ago."
Hyberbole notwithstanding, Prof. Farber apparently has not looked
outside his own office recently.
-jc-
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