Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!csn!boulder!happy.colorado.edu!hsrender
From: hsrender@happy.colorado.edu
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: Syntax Change Not Paradigm Shift
Message-ID: <1991Apr17.101902.1@happy.colorado.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 91 16:19:02 GMT
References: <47.UUL1.3#913@acw.com>
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In article <47.UUL1.3#913@acw.com>, scott@acw.com (Scott Guthery) writes:
> In the commercial realm where real computing is done and where the vast
> majority of both the cycles and the dollars of computing are found, one
> doesn't find this mindless pursuit of endless transliteration.  COBOL is
> sufficient and has been for years.  There is, you see, a real job to get
> done.

Yeah, when I was a boy we used to have to toggle switches on a com panel.
Sure the machine was big, slow, cost millions of dollars, used up enormous
amounts of electricity and generated enough heat to warm a football stadium,
but we got the job done and we LIKED it!  None of this namby-pamby RISC 
goobledy-floo, where you can wait a few seconds to see your compile finish.
In my day, we used to go away for WEEKS because we knew the average turn-around
time on a batch day was 3.5 days and the average availability of the machines
was 18 hours out of 24.  Most of us have to wear glasses now because of years
squinting at hex dumps printed by a failing ribbon on a line printer that we
had to keep running with wire and chewing gum.  Most of us have the pallor of 
albino cave fish from years spent in climate controlled basements tending
machines that cost 500 times as much as we made in a year.  None of this 
simpering about how much my portable PC weighs or how much Sun raised its
prices.  In my day we used to thank GOD that we had a tool like COBOL, a 
language that had was supposed to be for humans and whose programs looked 
like assembly instructions for a Y-12 bidirectional wing-wang oscillator.  
These days you hear these whining wimps going on about "functional" languages
and "logic programming" languages and "object-oriented" languages.  Pfah! 
We had a real job to do and we didn't have any choice: we had to use COBOL 
because we had spent $50,000 on the compiler and it was the only language 
that run on our ancient, outmoded hardware supported and we had no money 
left after trying to maintain hundreds of thousands of lines of poorly 
written, poorly structured, non-portable code that cost us thousands of hours
and dozens of burnt-out programmers.  There was a real job to be done and we 
did it and WE LIKED IT!!

hal.