I really, really hate to agree with this. But I remember fixing a small app my company purchased that was written in APL, and I REALLY don't know APL. But, you know, you look at it, and you look things up, and you think "maybe this shoulda said this other thing", and if it works then you look great.
--- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. -Abraham Albert Michelson in 1903 */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Leonard D Woren Sent: Wednesday, September 6, 2023 19:18 One day the company got authorization for a new account type. A few days later we get a call that the new account type wasn't broken out separately on some report. A group of us assembler programmers managed to find the source. In DYL250, which none of us knew although I had a vague awareness of how DYL250 worked. So with about 5 of them gathered around, I open up the source in what passed for an online editor. We stared at it, decided to clone "this" line to "over there", "change this column to xyz", "no it has to be higher up", etc. After a few minutes of this, I saved the updated source and ran it and it worked. From that I conclude that "a good programmer doesn't have to know what's doing." I don't know Pascal, but I modified a Pascal program once. (It was torture.) In my career, I've modified a few programs in languages that I don't know. I'll stick with HLA, although I keep saying I need to learn Metal/C. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
