NO stolen IP, dead SCO system

Message ID: 231217
Posted By: rgriffith64
Posted On: 2005-02-01 20:36:00
Subject: NO stolen IP, dead SCO system

That is acutally about a successful migration from SCO 3.2v4.2 to Linux. A forced migration, because the SCO system had a hardware failure and died beyond recovery. But a successful migration none the less.

The only thing stolen was a replacement hard drive from a duplicate scrap system used as a hardware source for the antiquated DEC MP433 system that ran the SCO stuff.

Acucobol - aaarrrghhh

Message ID: 231223
Posted By: hjweth
Posted On: 2005-02-01 20:50:00
Subject: Re: acucobol

At a recent job, one of the "tools" I worked hard to avoid using was called APSCobol (or something similar). My training/experience had been more of the Pascal/C/C++/Perl route. I had heard of COBOL, I had seen COBOL code, but I had never actually been expected to read or write it. So I got a COBOL book and read through it and got a novice handle on it and then discovered that APSCobol "helps" out by doing a lot of stuff for me, with the end result that variables would magically be populated and I would not know how it happened or when it might happen and I AM SCARRED FOR LIFE now. We hates it.

Acucobol anything like that?

Message ID: 231229
Posted By: cat_herder_5263
Posted On: 2005-02-01 21:04:00
Subject: Re: acucobol

----------------8< Quote >8----------------
Acucobol anything like that?
----------------8< Quote> 8----------------

No. It's a real compiler that compiles COBOL source to an intermediate object format that is common to all platforms that Accucobol supports. The runtime system is specific to the platform. Performance isn't super, but it's portable.

I was a mainframe programmer in the 60s and 70s (IBM DOS and OS, Burroughs Medium Systems MCP). COBOL was impossible to avoid for commercial applications on the BIG IRON.

=^^=

Message ID: 231232
Posted By: hjweth
Posted On: 2005-02-01 21:10:00
Subject: Re: acucobol

>> I was a mainframe programmer in the 60s and 70s (IBM DOS and OS, Burroughs Medium Systems MCP). COBOL was impossible to avoid for commercial applications on the BIG IRON.

I'm a unix guy, but the original architects were not. So we wrote COBOL on the IBM mainframe, which cross compiled it for the AIX/R6000s. As much as possible, I wrote C natively for the 6000s.

The user-interface was superficially patterned after the mainframe interface (F3 exited a screen on both, but on the mainframe it saved first and on the 6000s it didn't). A very warped system.

Message ID: 231237
Posted By: cat_herder_5263
Posted On: 2005-02-01 21:25:00
Subject: Re: acucobol

----------------8< Quote >8----------------
I'm a unix guy, but the original architects were not. So we wrote COBOL on the IBM mainframe, which cross compiled it for the AIX/R6000s. As much as possible, I wrote C natively for the 6000s.
----------------8< Quote >8----------------

I suppose you used the MicroFocus compiler rebranded by IBM.

I wrote and supported COBOL through the early 90s. I taught myself C on MS-DOS in the early 80s. From the mid-80s almost everything I've written for my own use has been in C or (now) C++. I migrated to Unix in 1990 and pretty much became a Unix guy in 1996.

I found on the mainframes there was a serious gap between "application" programmers and "systems" programmers. I had to wear both hats. On the IBM mainframes my favorite language was assembler.

That same gap was noticible between the average COBOL programmer and anyone who was proficient in a system-level language. Their eyes glazed over when they were told about functions that RETURNED VALUES rather than messing with GLOBAL variables. They couldn't understand memory management. When exposed to multiple asynchronous processes they went catatonic.

WOW! that was a rant!

=^^=

Message ID: 231247
Posted By: ColonelZen
Posted On: 2005-02-01 21:47:00
Subject: Re: acucobol

Dumps and donuts on greenbar 14x11 for breakfast. Yum.

I migrated to systems work early on but kept getting called back to read dumps because the numbnuts coming out of schools couldn't tell a BXLE from a BCTR and thought a linkage convention was some kind of sex party.

-- TWZ

The texts of these Yahoo Message Board posts have been licensed for copying and distribution by the Yahoo Message Board users "rgriffith64", "hjweth", "cat_herder_5263", "ColonelZen" under the following license: License: CCL Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike v2.0.