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Re: [open-cobol-list] Best online and text tutorials?
From: |
Brian Tiffin |
Subject: |
Re: [open-cobol-list] Best online and text tutorials? |
Date: |
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:17:56 -0400 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.9.9 |
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.