I have had a curious reaction to recent developments in this thread. Many posters apparently see virtues in not being authorized that are distinct from not needing to be authorized.
An authorized program can do great, even lethal damage; and the standards for them are or should be much higher than they are or need be for a program that generates mailing labels. That conceded, little that is useful gets done without the use, either explicitly or under the covers, of authorized programs; there is nothing fearsome about them; and their avoidance is a recipe for inadequacy. Many posters do not really know what serialization is and are quite happy in their ignorance. I find this at once more surprising and more disturbing, not least because even minimally competent COBOL programmers need to know about it. Still, we all have our own preoccupations: Navitra de ventis, de tauris narrat arator, Enumerat miles vulnera, pastor oves. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
