I definitely get having enough of it, old/cranky/ornery or not. And you'll notice (or maybe you didn't) that I said nothing about ragging on COBOL programmers. There I'm much more inclined to agree with you.
While I'm making disclaimers, I don't need much in the way of respect when you're disagreeing. Or let's say I don't need ~professions~ of respect; I take it for granted that two people can disagree without flinging insults. If I disagree with you (which I'm about to), please assume that disagreement is ~all~ it is. I don't have to think you're stupid for disagreeing with me; heck you may even be right and I wrong. (Don't laugh, it's technically possible.) What I'm really thinking is that if you take offense, it harms you - maybe just a little, maybe a lot depending on what you do with it - and harms the other guy not at all. Yes, the other guy should be polite, and so should I; I'm not disagreeing with that. But I'm not talking about the folks who aren't polite (and there'll always be those who aren't), I'm talking about how I should receive it. If I resent it when the offense is unintentional, that's pretty dumb. And if I resent it when resentment is what the speaker wanted from me, to me that seems even dumber. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. -Erasmus */ I swear this used to be in my tagline file, but I went looking for it the other day and couldn't find it. I must have deleted it accidentally. I had to go look it up on the web (I didn't remember who said it) and put it back in. Who is Erasmus, anyway? Here he is: "Dutch philosopher and Catholic theologian who is considered one of the greatest scholars of the northern Renaissance". When I was a traveling contractor I would take a job in some far-off city. I'd pack up the car with my stuff (if I couldn't put everything I owned into the trunk and back seat, I figured I owned too much stuff), drive to Phoenix or Minneapolis or Philly or wherever, and live there for the duration of the contract, flying home some weekends to visit. Most of my books went into long-term storage during this phase of my life - that is, two of my daughters and one of my sons now have them and the arrangement is probably more or less permanent - but three or four boxes of books always went with me. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Farley, Peter Sent: Monday, March 27, 2023 12:03 Respectfully, I disagree. It isn't a waste of time or energy to be offended by patent insults, however slyly delivered or with whatever level of snigger behind the words. I did not used to support any of the campaigns against "micro-aggressions" so popular in recent years on university and college campuses across the country, but I have come to see that they are not entirely wrong-headed or petty or overblown. Taken too far at times, yes, I see that too. But they are not wrong at the base. This particular one just "got to me". The proverbial straw on that poor camel's back. I'm old and cranky and ornery, so I say things when they happen to hit me because time is not on my side. I do try very hard not to impugn anyone else's character or capabilities, because that's just wrong. There is solid advice in the old adage to say nothing if you cannot say something good. I am also reminded of some pithy advice from Robert Heinlein's character Lazarus Long about the absolute necessity of maintaining consistent politeness in order to sustain a functioning and loving family, and in the broader sense to maintain a functioning and civil society. P.S. -- I love your Erasmus tagline and agree wholeheartedly. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bob Bridges Sent: Monday, March 27, 2023 9:44 AM Peter! I don't think I've heard from you recently; maybe I just wasn't paying attention until I read this one. I myself dislike COBOL for the very simple and personal reason that it's so WORDY. But even when I had to use it a lot (I was a COBOL developer for about 15 years), I was aware that it's a powerful language with good organizational features for what we used to call top-down programming, and I enjoy sneering (a nasty, superior smirk) at claims that it's a dinosaur and will soon die an unmourned death as other languages supplant it. Not gonna happen, not in my lifetime anyway. Maybe in the Millennium, though I'm doubtful. Not true, though, that it's "not acceptable" to rag on COBOL. Obviously it is. Don't waste your time and energy taking offense; we haven't enough of either to throw about to no benefit. /* When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. -Erasmus */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Farley, Peter Sent: Monday, March 27, 2023 01:56 I am getting increasingly tired of snide or outright dismissive references to COBOL and by extension to COBOL programmers. Programmers like me. Yes, I am also well versed in HLASM, Rexx, awk and gawk, somewhat facile in SORT (at least as far as knowing and using JOIN's), SQL, JCL and various other z/OS utilities, MetalC, and lately python and bash scripting. I even remember some of the PL/I and Fortran and Pascal I used in college and my early employment days. I even remember some SNOBOL, which I actually got to use productively at a then-major NY bank very early in my career. COBOL pays my bills and keeps my employer operating successfully and profitably. COBOL does NOT rot the brain. Alcohol and various other legal and illegal substances can, in fact, do that. Intelligently devising business solutions to business problems in ANY computer language does NOT rot the brain. It is not funny or acceptable to say so. It never was. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
