Re: [open-cobol-list] Best online and text tutorials?

[Brian Tiffin]

On August 11, 2008 01:31:55 pm John Culleton wrote:

> Visited the blog but couldn't figure out quickly how to post a reply.
> There were many misstatements, on data typing and so on.  Java is
> fading in importance now that Php is available for web use.

The thing that gets me, having been involved in 30 million dollar epic FAIL 
projects that tried to replace our legacy polyFORTH and COBOL trouble 
management systems is the new kid on the block syndrome.  The quote that
made the rounds was "legacy systems will suck you dry".  Bull pucky.  30 
million dollar cancelled projects will dent the coffers a lot faster than 
continuing support of working systems.

Same for this blogger.  Many technology architects live in a fantasy land of 
newer is always better.  Bull pucky.  I'd bet my fortune (near zero) that 
near 0 lines of the Java written today will still be in production 50 years 
hence.  And I'll bet that same fortune that a good half of the already 50 
year old COBOL (many billions of lines of code) will make it to the ripe old 
age of 100 and banks will still make profits.

And perhaps, if we play our cards right, a fair number of those lines will 
have been directly ported to Keisuke and Roger's most excellent adventure, 
OpenCOBOL.  :)

I've always seen it as akin to an engineer looking at the Great Wall of China 
and thinking it's too old and not cost effective, so better to knock it down 
and try again.

And little do many seem to realize that the y2k problem is going to look like 
a cake walk when 2038 rolls around and the 4 byte 1970 Epoch hits its limits.  
Far harder to read through and retrofit that code than good old COBOL, imho.  
If those concerned can even find all the places that time_t format is 
squirreled away in embedded systems.

Anyway; posting to this list ... preaching to the choir.

Cheers,
Brian

P.S.  If things continue apace, OpenCOBOL will be a very Net ready and capable 
application tool sooner rather than later.  Along with its already impressive 
feature set.