I recall a tool from the early 1970s that could take a program and change all 
of the variables to combinations of "I", "O", "0", and "1".

The "real source code" was kept on punched cards in a vault, and the "encrypted 
source code" was kept online.

It was believed that a thief would find the "encrypted source code" to be 
useless.

I don't know if that belief was ever put to the test.

John P. Baker

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of 
Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2020 9:47 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: New Jersey Pleas for COBOL Coders for Mainframes Amid Coronavirus 
Pandemic

On Thu, 9 Apr 2020 13:09:56 -0400, Phil Smith III wrote: 
>
>Another friend had a colleague who allegedly wrote a program using variables 
>whose names were all zeroes and ohs and ones and ells [spelling these out for 
>readability]. He eventually trashed it because HE couldn't debug it!
> 
Leads me to think of https://esolangs.org/wiki/%42%72%61%69%6e%66%75%63%6b

-- gil

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