It seems your picking a fight that doesn't exist. The IRS, has not had a problem complying with the tax code, nor in processing returns. Software was clearly changed and capable of doing what was needed.
COBOL was never intended to interface directly with networking software so it was no more suited for IP than it was for SNA. Those services were provided by subsystems like CICS for which COBOL still works. I have no idea of why you think customers care about COBOL skills. The issue I have, is that all the complaining about IBM seems to overlook one important fact. It is IBM that enables companies to preserve their investment in code that was developed and is still running 40 years later. When *nix and Windows systems can do some comparable, then there might be something to discuss. At present, they can't even assure a program's operation between releases let alone over decades of use. Sent from my iPhone > On Apr 20, 2018, at 3:26 PM, Paul Gilmartin > <0000000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote: > >> On Fri, 20 Apr 2018 19:25:54 +0000, Lester, Bob wrote: >> >> I agree with both you and Gil. But, how many programmers in the 60s, 70s, >> even 80s were thinking about Y2K? Sure, the really good ones were, but what >> about the other 80%? >> >> ....and, Y2K came off without a hitch...(FSVO - "hitch") 😊 > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List Porowski, Kenneth >> Sent: Friday, April 20, 2018 1:20 PM >> >> That was due to lack of foresight by the programmer not due to the age of >> the system. > True in the sense that it affected one-year-old computers as much as older > computers > running th same software. > > I'm disappointed that this thread has so much focused on Y2K which I meant > only as > an extreme example. Things change. Y2K was only more precisely forseeable. > > Increasing complexity of the tax code requires new logic. Inflation and rate > escalation > may have made some data fields inadequate in size. E-filing requires network > interfaces > and code to support them and causes the one-day spike in workload. I gather > from > these fora that COBOL is not comfortably suited to TCP/IP. IBM bet that > SNA/VTAM > could crush TCP/IP and customers were the losers. IBM bet that EBCDIC could > crush > ASCII and customers were the losers. And customers bet that COBOL skills > would remain > in the forefront of availability. > > -- gil > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
