On 7 Feb 2015 21:04:11 -0800, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote: >http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/2015/02/06/old-computers-state-government-agencies/22953063/ > >On Sat, 7 Feb 2015 19:50:10 -0500, scott wrote: > >>Which state agencies? Some out of work programmers would probably love >>to do some meaningful work. >> >>On 02/07/2015 01:01 PM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote: >>> local news just had item about ancient software at state agencies, 619 >>> major cobol applications developed in 80s ... frequent crashes&outages, >>> almost impossible to maintain or change ... in part because of the lack >>> of cobol programmers. The state is even considering setting up financial >>> incentive for schools to produce cobol programmers. >>> 18 months to code for a special license plate? As both an applications programmer analyst and a systems programmer, I find that absurd. May it is 10 months to create the test data, 1 day to code the change and 8 months to do the paperwork. As someone who learned Honeywell 800 FACT in a class and picked up COBOL by reading a Burroughs 5000 COBOL manual, it isn't that difficult to learn COBOL. Documenting the systems could help. Of course special license plates should be in an external table but that is another story.
Clark Morris > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
