Mr. Farber is an idiot. On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 9:50 AM, john gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I like David Farber's (of course impolitic) 'vacuum tubes' analogy. > > From this morning's New York Times: > > But the California controller, John Chiang, says the state's payroll system > — which uses a programming throwback known as Cobol, or Common > Business-Oriented Language — is so antiquated it would take months to make > the changes to workers' checks. > > "In 2003, my office tried to see if we could reconfigure our system to do > such a task," Mr. Chiang told a State Senate committee on Monday. "And after > 12 months, we stopped without a feasible solution." > > David J. Farber, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon > University, said using Cobol was roughly equivalent to having "a television > with vacuum tubes." > > "There are no Cobol programmers around anymore," Mr. Farber said. "They > retired centuries ago." John GilmoreAshland, MA 01721-1817USA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get Windows Live and get whatever you need, wherever you are. Start here. > http://www.windowslive.com/default.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Home_082008 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html > > -- Mark Pace Mainline Information Systems 1700 Summit Lake Drive Tallahassee, FL. 32317 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
