Re: [Tiny-cobol-users] ACCEPT etc. WAS Segmentation Fault

[David E. <de...@us...>]

Binyamin Dissen wrote:

 > David Essex wrote:
 >
 >> Have you ever heard the story about some COBOL programmers
 >> employed in the financial sector.
 >
 >> Apparently these COBOL programmers had written some mission
 >> critical applications. They used so many 66 levels and ALTER
 >> statements, that it made very difficult for any else to
 >> understand the code.
 >
 >> Of course they used this code to ensure job security and what
 >> they considered a GOOD salary.
 >
 > Depends when it was done.
 >
 > Back in Ye Olde Days, not only would it have been ridiculous
 > to use 3M for a simple Hello World program, one could not even
 > guarantee 100K being available (including buffers).
 >
 > While overlays and ALTERS are most unstructured, they do allow
 > for faster and smaller code.
 >
 > So if this code was written in the 90s, yes, there is something
 > wrong.
 >
 > If this code was written in the 70s, good code. And much more
 > maintainable (by the average programmer) than assembler.

I agree that small code may have been good practice back in the
60s early 70s.

However, assuming this part of the urban legend is true, these
programs were replaced by structured programming methods.
So memory was not an issue.

Even if the programs were written back in the 60s, these
programs could have been easily converted by the maintainers
of these systems. Not to mention cheaper.

As to why management choose to replace these programmers, who
knows. Maybe it was just cheaper to replace them with less paid
programmers. Then used some excuse to justify their actions.
Nothing new under the sun here ...

That is the thing about urban legends, you never really know
what to believe.


Cheers