And therein lies the rub. When companies stopped paying for training in anything except management skills and IBM stopped supporting computer science in universities with free or low-cost hardware and software, the technical knowledge base gradually bit-rotted or retired, until now (nearly) the only people left who know that language have an average age of probably 55 or 60.
Add in the "it ain't broke, so don't fix or update it" attitudes and there are scads of COBOL (and assembler) code running business production work with only (relatively) tiny staffing to support them. TAANSTAFL. Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of David Crayford Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 2:27 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: DataPower XML Appliance and RACF On 13/06/2013 9:26 PM, John Gilmore wrote: > Here, > however, I will limit myself to noting that COBOL too is an enormously > popular language. Some metrics make it even more popular than C. > Its deficiencies qua statement-level procedural language are equally > clear. If there really is that much COBOL code in production then where are the armies of COBOL programmers to support it? > John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
