OT: Latin translation

In regard to the Roman use of capital letters, Bill intoned:

Come on Bill, you were around in the late Middle Ages. Did they or didn't they?

I personally don't remember.

Oxmoron1 MFE

Ah grasshopper you show your youth and inexperience. I still have an Apple ][+ stashed away which I bought with Apple Integer basic in ROM instead of Applesoft basic, so it's basically an original Apple ][ with the autostart ROM.

Ah yes, the old Videx board. And of course you did the shift key rewiring mod didn't you?

But the Videx came from the Geeks and not the Romans!

Yep, must have been a chisel-slip!

There are still lots of COBOL shops and what I call "Cobolosauruses" around - the government agency I work for uses a lot of old COBOL business systems although we are slowly transitioning to COTS. When the Y2K problem arrived I think people were surprised at how many COBOL systems were still running.

"Archaic" is in the mind of the user - we've been through multiple generations of supposedly more friendly and more usable "modern" programming languages/environments, and the old systems keep on running while some of these newer technologies that were going to change everything for the better have already come and gone.

If you want to talk about archaic, within the last five years I have heard of people still using IBM punched cards. And if you've ever used IBM JCL to any extent you know the true meaning of the word archaic.

John Hairell ( snipped-for-privacy@erols.com)

That surprises me. Guess that I'm too spoiled by my PC and my daughter's laptop.

When a system is considered obsolete (even though it still works fine) after two years, a forty-year-old computer language IS archaic. But hey, some people still light their fires with flint and steel.

As I said, I programmed the IBM 1401. The damn thing was as big as a Volkswagen and "only" about 4K memory. Then there were the equally big printer and collator. That puppy was programmed via punch card. And the programmers had to know how to punch the cards and verify them. One of an outgoing Marine's favorite "hobbies" was to play a bit with the programming, the more creative, the better. The 1401 was used for fiscal programs, paychecks and the like. One of my favorites was when my buddy got out. He "adjusted" the program so that it would send the Commanding General's pay to one of the sargeants' paycheck, and vice-versa. You'd have thought that the General caught his wife in bed with the janitor, the screaming was so loud. I seem to recall that the sargeant quietly (and very quickly) cashed his check......

-- John ___ __[xxx]__ (o - ) --------o00o--(_)--o00o-------

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written - Henry Kissinger

I understand. Dad begun as an OS operator on a 4314 (IIRC) with OS360 and I started earning with Cobol/CICS in 1987, but some years ago the firm steered to the SAP/ABAP crap. I had to chew some of it. Awful! Give me those delightful BALR, MOV, nibbles, double-dabble, literal pools, etc...

-- Luca Beato -

Of course. I wouldn't even think of screwing around inside the box these days, unless it's to put a card into a slot.

Pre-Pusillimollicum [so much for my attempt at Latin]

Mark Schynert

I still speak FORTRAN, and as I was perusing the course catalog for my local junior college today I noted that they still teach it there.

BTW - I was in the last class of CS students that got taught on punch cards at Illinois in '79 or so. Proceeded to learn and use terminals from then until '85, at which point I took a job with a supposedly "leading" aerospace corporation where...they used punch cards.

I'm passing most of this learned conversation on to the kid as I don't know anything about most of it, BUT, I do agree about using supposedly ancient programs if they continue to work. Every time he 'upgrades' something here it worries me what old trustworthy operation will no longer function because of it.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

This gives that pleasant revenge feeling when you port Cobol applications from mainframe to Windows environment by recompiling them with Microfocus or other compatible compilers. ;-)

-- Luca Beato -