Programmed Canon Canola calculators in 1977. Assorted platforms and languages ever since. Assisting with HOPL.info.
I am NOT looking for work -- I've got more than enough to do.
Location
Perth, WA Australia
Education
A few diplomas.
Work
Software Engineer at [Daisy Digital](https://daisydigital.com.au/)
So framework X comes along. Devs try it and rave about it. More devs sign on and soon there's large wave of devotees. Lots of software gets written. Business rules get encoded. Bottom lines begin to depend on the framework.
And then another wave comes through. Its actually not that easy to rewrite everything. Nor is it financially viable. What do you live on while everyone scrambles to re-tool and re-write? And since when has a rewrite not injected idiosyncratic language- or framework-specific bugs into a previously stable, mostly-debugged system?
This is why there are still multiple millions of lines of COBOL out there running on mainframes -- the cost of change becomes prohibitive. And what do you run while you wait for the new stuff to arrive? And why bother waiting for new stuff to arrive if the old stuff works? And what do you rewrite it in if the sea keeps changing? There was a while there when folk actually talked of replacing Fortran with Forth and COBOL with Java.
What's missing from the meme at the top of this article is the sprightly octogenerian grandmother (labelled COBOL) who rolls her eyes at the immaturity of the young man's wandering gaze. She still riding her wave.
Programmed Canon Canola calculators in 1977. Assorted platforms and languages ever since. Assisting with HOPL.info.
I am NOT looking for work -- I've got more than enough to do.
Location
Perth, WA Australia
Education
A few diplomas.
Work
Software Engineer at [Daisy Digital](https://daisydigital.com.au/)
Yes. Which is why I was on comp.lang.cobol recently trying to convince folk to get a COBOL course running on exercism.io. They didn't exactly jump with excitement over the idea. Yeah, setting up a course isn't a simple process but even so there's money to be made knowing COBOL.
So framework X comes along. Devs try it and rave about it. More devs sign on and soon there's large wave of devotees. Lots of software gets written. Business rules get encoded. Bottom lines begin to depend on the framework.
And then another wave comes through. Its actually not that easy to rewrite everything. Nor is it financially viable. What do you live on while everyone scrambles to re-tool and re-write? And since when has a rewrite not injected idiosyncratic language- or framework-specific bugs into a previously stable, mostly-debugged system?
This is why there are still multiple millions of lines of COBOL out there running on mainframes -- the cost of change becomes prohibitive. And what do you run while you wait for the new stuff to arrive? And why bother waiting for new stuff to arrive if the old stuff works? And what do you rewrite it in if the sea keeps changing? There was a while there when folk actually talked of replacing Fortran with Forth and COBOL with Java.
What's missing from the meme at the top of this article is the sprightly octogenerian grandmother (labelled COBOL) who rolls her eyes at the immaturity of the young man's wandering gaze. She still riding her wave.
The problem is that banks for example now how problems of finding these grandmother's 😄
Yes. Which is why I was on comp.lang.cobol recently trying to convince folk to get a COBOL course running on exercism.io. They didn't exactly jump with excitement over the idea. Yeah, setting up a course isn't a simple process but even so there's money to be made knowing COBOL.
That's true!
If you know COBOL you can make a lot of money!
Because banks, for example, want to solve everything with money ;)