[Cialug] Programming languages: next 10 yrs

[murraymckee at wellsfargo.com]

When I started being employed in the early 80s I inherited a program from one of the earliest versions of the S360 IBM mainframe architecture, probably written 20 some years earlier I'd guess.  It was a "big" program, at least big for the early day.  That program had comments at the beginning that said "Run in 32K.  Will not run in 16K."  Yes "K" is correct.  It's hard to imagine a mainframe with less than 32K of memory, or at least less than 32K available to the application program.  The program was in regular use until we decommissioned the system in 2014.  I had to read and understand the program because I had to diagnose a couple of problems, but they turned out to be invalid inputs, not a problem with the program.  So I know the program was in use for 35+ years and probably 50+ years.  It moved from one generation of IBM mainframe to another without even recompiling.  Old programs/languages are hard to kill off.

Murray McKee
Systems Support Analyst - Infrastructure Project Support Team 
Retail Lending Technology 
DESK (515)326-6556 MAC F0005-010 
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MurrayMcKee at WellsFargo.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On Behalf Of Kyle H
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 1:14 PM
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Programming languages: next 10 yrs

Nice write up, agreed.

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 1:03 PM Bill Davis <bill.davis at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, COBOL is not dead. Don't hold your breath, either.
>
> We still have COBOL at the State. New development IS occurring. They 
> actually asked me to help out with it a few years back, as they were 
> overloaded/short handed and my supervisor recalled seeing it on my resume.
> I pointed out that hadn't worked in COBOL since maybe 1985. They were 
> ok with that.  It actually came back fairly well. Even remembered at 
> bit of JCL.
>
> And a web site I maintain talks to a mainframe-based web service 
> written in COBOL that pull data off the mainframe database. I took 
> over maintenance of the COBOL web service side, too, a while back when 
> the developer left. I originally just did the Java-side (JSP) work for 
> the web site.  Neither side is needing too many changes at this point.
>
> Lots of other languages are in use here too. I've done a bit of 
> Ruby/Rails some years ago, a bit of VBA still crops up now and again 
> (so far some in Excel, some in Word and some in Outlook.) I know C# 
> and other .Net languages, PHP, etc get used at the state, and my group 
> uses Java JSF (but not me, yet).
>
> Flexibility and breadth of knowledge are important!  Code lasts forever.
> Or at least it is very wise to assume so.
>
>  - Bill
>
> > On Apr 28, 2017, at 11:29 AM, Daniel A. Ramaley <
> daniel.ramaley at drake.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> On 2017-04-28 10:28, David Champion wrote:
> >> Is COBOL dead yet?
> >
> > We still have some COBOL running here. Thankfully, maintaining it is 
> > not my problem. New stuff isn't being developed in it.
> >
> > Still have some Fortran too, though the new development in that 
> > language is pretty much limited to the physics faculty at this point.
> >
> > __
> > Daniel Ramaley | Server Engineer 2
> > Information Technology Services | Drake University
> > T: +1-515-271-4540
> > W: http://its.drake.edu/
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