Re: TECO! was, err, COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-21 Thread Ben Scott 
On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:23 PM Ric Werme  wrote:
> Do newbies these days know what LIFE is other than some early cellular
> automaton?

Is it something else?

(I presume you're not referring to the corny board game.)

-- Ben
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Re: TECO! was, err, COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-10 Thread Ric Werme 
> ... He wrote an assembler using it. And several games
> including, I think, Conway's game of life (*).
>
> Not much of a story, I know.
>
> -mm-
>
> (*)which can be written in anything, I suppose, even TECO.

Please don't tempt me. It would be a good TECO hack and pretty
straightforward.  :-)

Do newbies these days know what LIFE is other than some early cellular
automaton?

Thank you, Martin Gardner.

  -Ric

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Re: COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-09 Thread Mark E. Mallett 
On Mon, Jan 06, 2020 at 10:44:13PM -0500, R. Anthony Lomartire wrote:
> So I recently landed a job working in COBOL on HP-UX. It's been a trip!
> This stuff is from before my time but it's been really interesting to
> learn. Have any of you folks worked with this stuff? We're looking to
> migrate away eventually, maybe anyone with experience there? I'd love to
> hear any stories about COBOL or old enterprise mainframe applications
> you've worked with. We're probably going to be hiring soon too if anyone
> would be interested in a similar gig. :)

I was unable to avoid working in COBOL entirely. I try not to remember.
Still.. way back when (in the before time, in the long-long ago) one of
my co-employees at a contract shop I worked for was a big COBOL fan,
even though he was young (just out of high school as I recall) and COBOL
was passe even then. He wrote an assembler using it. And several games
including, I think, Conway's game of life (*).

Not much of a story, I know.

-mm-

(*)which can be written in anything, I suppose, even TECO.
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Re: COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-08 Thread Ben Scott 
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 11:19 PM Ken D'Ambrosio  wrote:
> So I, a relative HP-UX neophyte, ordered COBOL for some thousands of dollars.
...
> That's a top-five most-frustrating-thing ever.  I sincerely hope that things 
> have changed in the intervening time.

Things have changed!  They're worse.  Now HP has split themselves into
two companies and is fighting over remains like a couple of dogs
playing tug-of-war with an old sock.  :-(

-- Ben
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Re: COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-08 Thread Tom Buskey 
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 11:19 PM Ken D'Ambrosio  wrote:

> On 2020-01-06 22:44, R. Anthony Lomartire wrote:
>
> So I recently landed a job working in COBOL on HP-UX. It's been a trip!
>
>
> Oh, man.  You just had to go there.  Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I *do*
> have a COBOL on HP-UX story.  I was working at a startup c. 2002, and we
> wanted to use the PointMan ERP system on our HP-UX hosts.  (Linux wasn't
> yet an option for PointMan.)  So I, a relative HP-UX neophyte, ordered
> COBOL for some thousands of dollars.  I got, in a FedEx envelope: one (1)
> sheet of paper with one (1) serial number and a phone number to order more
> stuff.
>
> Period.
>
> I mean, silly me.  For a couple of thousand bucks, I'd expected install
> media, release notes, some accompanying documentation.  *SOMETHING*  So I
> call the phone number and am like, "What in the world do I *do* with
> this??"  They transfer me to another number.  Which transfers me to another
> number.  Which transfers me to another number.  Who gives me a number they
> promise will be able to help.  It's only after I hang up that I realize
> it's the first number I'd called -- the one on the piece of paper.  At this
> point, I begin to doubt my sanity.
> Oh -- and did I mention the ERP system, itself, cost something north of
> $150K, and I had the CFO breathing down my neck to get it installed, like,
> yesterday?
> I finally find some poor woman who's at least, like, *heard* of COBOL.
> And she gets me to people who are willing to help me -- if I pay the $750
> (? -- I think that's right) maintenance fee.  So I do.  And get connected
> with a very helpful engineer who explains the software is on the install
> media that *came with the system*; I just needed the serial number to
> activate it.
> "Except, oh, yeah, YOUR version of the install media has a bug, and COBOL
> won't install.  I need to mail you a file."
> "So, you mean, even if I knew HP-UX super-duper well, I *STILL* wouldn't
> have been able to install it?"
> "Yeah, that about sums it up."
>
> Again: release notes.  Errata.  An fscking URL.  ANYTHING.  I wrote our HP
> rep a letter the likes of which I generally try not to write.  He called me
> up and asked what he could do to make it right.  I said that was
> impossible, but implored him not to screw over other customers.
>
> That's a top-five most-frustrating-thing ever.  I sincerely hope that
> things have changed in the intervening time.
>
> -Ken
>
>

That pretty much sums up most of my experience with HP support, going back
to when they got into Unix workstations buying Apollo.  Professionally,
I've avoided them when I could because of it.  If you're into used/retro
computers (tape drives, etc) at home, its worse.  You need support
contracts for anything.  It's almost easier to find manuals & tech
materials for older Sun systems on Oracle's sites today.
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Re: COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-07 Thread Joshua Judson Rosen 
On 1/7/20 11:36 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
 > My first few programming jobs was as a COBOL programmer on both Burroughs 
 > and IBM  mainframes in the 1970s.
 > I even was able to have lunch with Grace Hopper. In college I learned 
 > Fortran and BASIC. And pdp 8 assembler.
 > I got a copy of the original K and learned C to wean me from COBOL.
 > As a contractor I did have 1 COBOL assignment on HP-UX.

FYI since apparently there are several of you guys here...,
I think I heard something not long ago about the GNUCobol looking to
build up a catalog of properly free COBOL programming reference material,
"to show people good code samples" etc.--since I guess the only such
archive that's known so far is the SimoTime listing, and much of _that_ is
"All Rights Reserved, look and learn but don't copy"

Any interest? And _thoughts_ about such an undertaking?

-- 
Connect with me on the GNU social network! 

Not on the network? Ask me for more info!
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Re: COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-07 Thread Jerry Feldman 
My first few programming jobs was as a COBOL programmer on both Burroughs
and IBM  mainframes in the 1970s. I even was able to have lunch with Grace
Hopper. In college I learned Fortran and BASIC. And pdp 8 assembler. I got
a copy of the original K and learned C to wean me from COBOL. As a
contractor I did have 1 COBOL assignment on HP-UX.

--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix http://www.blu.org
PGP key id: 6F6BB6E7
PGP Key fingerprint: 0EDC 2FF5 53A6 8EED 84D1  3050 5715 B88D 6F6
B B6E7

On Mon, Jan 6, 2020, 11:26 PM Bill Ricker  wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 10:45 PM R. Anthony Lomartire <
> opensourcek...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So I recently landed a job working in COBOL on HP-UX. It's been a trip!
>>
>
> HPUX is "interesting".
> HP and IBM both made IT-friendly variants of Unix (previously it was just
> an engineering OS; named "HPUX" and "AIX" respectively) long before POSIX
> standardized the needed richer security/permissions features (e.g. ACLs),
> and of course the other brands refused to bless either HPUX or AIX's
> variations.  So life is odd on either of them.  I survived HPUX, and liked
> AIX, when I had projects on them.
>
> This stuff is from before my time but it's been really interesting to
>> learn. Have any of you folks worked with this stuff?
>>
>
> Well yes.
>I coached a couple of girlfriends through the COBOL assignment in their
> Survey of Languages courses in '79-'80, using an already obsolete IBM 1401
> user manual, without having taken the course or studied COBOL more than
> casual reading. (They both passed, and I'm still married to one of them!)
> Then in 1981, i was paid to "write" (tweaked copy-pasta reuse) 2 lines
> of COBOL on the TOPS-10 PDP-10 at DOT VOLPE center, to add field 13 A to
> the processing for a form, after adding 13 A between 13 and 14 in the
> Screen Painter and the DBMS schema. (And dump and reload the data of
> course.)
>(We were the Fortran department, but our previous DB guru was bilingual
> and noticed that the Cobol/DP dept had gotten a Form-painter application
> that worked on glass terminals in block mode, to get away from literally
> keypunching data on cards, and it only supported COBOL -- would generate a
> DATASECT and an object to link to; and our DBMS System 1022 also generated
> a DATASECT for COBOL (and did similar for Fortran), so it was a small
> matter of  (pseudocode cobol)
> CALL INPUT_FORM_ROUTINE
>
> IF <*validate input buffer field*>
> COPY input7 TO output7
> ELSE SET ERROR_SEEN TO 1
>
>
> *... lather rinse repeat 1 to 17 ... and then insert 13A between 13 and 14
> after it's been in "production" for months.*
>
> CALL WRITE_OUTPUT_TO_DBMS
>
> The DEC PDP-10 had 36 bit words, so DEC TOPS COBOL had 6 x 6-bit ASCII
> UPPER CASE CHARACTERS PER WORD. (WHO NEEDS LOWER CASE?)
> DEC TOPS Fortran by contrast had discovered mixed case and had 5 x 7-bit
> ASCII per word. (But the bit left over was mantissa lsb, not sign, so was
> pretty much useless as a out of band marker.)
>
> We're looking to migrate away eventually, maybe anyone with experience
>> there? I'd love to hear any stories about COBOL or old enterprise mainframe
>> applications you've worked with. We're probably going to be hiring soon too
>> if anyone would be interested in a similar gig. :)
>>
>
> Early in the new century, my old financials shop was looking to replace
> two overlapping business critical applications, one Mainframe COBOL and one
> VMS COBOL,  with something new.  (We'd already replaced the PL/1
> application running on Stratus.) Eventually* instead of paying a vendor to
> upgrade their Unix/Linux C++ app with Java UI to handle the needed
> features, the vendor for the IBM M/F COBOL app added the features needed to
> retire the VMS app.  (I didn't directly touch the Mainframe, but dealt with
> the problems of transferring LRECL EBCDIC files to CRLF ASCII Unix/Linux
> hosts and vice versa, as well as App/OS/HW interface/capacity issues on
> Unix/Linux platforms. Much hilarity with file transfers.)
>
> *Eventually = I think they finally finished??
>
> --
> Bill Ricker
> bill.n1...@gmail.com bric...@theperlshop.com
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
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Re: COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-06 Thread Bill Ricker 
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 10:45 PM R. Anthony Lomartire <
opensourcek...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So I recently landed a job working in COBOL on HP-UX. It's been a trip!
>

HPUX is "interesting".
HP and IBM both made IT-friendly variants of Unix (previously it was just
an engineering OS; named "HPUX" and "AIX" respectively) long before POSIX
standardized the needed richer security/permissions features (e.g. ACLs),
and of course the other brands refused to bless either HPUX or AIX's
variations.  So life is odd on either of them.  I survived HPUX, and liked
AIX, when I had projects on them.

This stuff is from before my time but it's been really interesting to
> learn. Have any of you folks worked with this stuff?
>

Well yes.
   I coached a couple of girlfriends through the COBOL assignment in their
Survey of Languages courses in '79-'80, using an already obsolete IBM 1401
user manual, without having taken the course or studied COBOL more than
casual reading. (They both passed, and I'm still married to one of them!)
Then in 1981, i was paid to "write" (tweaked copy-pasta reuse) 2 lines
of COBOL on the TOPS-10 PDP-10 at DOT VOLPE center, to add field 13 A to
the processing for a form, after adding 13 A between 13 and 14 in the
Screen Painter and the DBMS schema. (And dump and reload the data of
course.)
   (We were the Fortran department, but our previous DB guru was bilingual
and noticed that the Cobol/DP dept had gotten a Form-painter application
that worked on glass terminals in block mode, to get away from literally
keypunching data on cards, and it only supported COBOL -- would generate a
DATASECT and an object to link to; and our DBMS System 1022 also generated
a DATASECT for COBOL (and did similar for Fortran), so it was a small
matter of  (pseudocode cobol)
CALL INPUT_FORM_ROUTINE

IF <*validate input buffer field*>
COPY input7 TO output7
ELSE SET ERROR_SEEN TO 1


*... lather rinse repeat 1 to 17 ... and then insert 13A between 13 and 14
after it's been in "production" for months.*

CALL WRITE_OUTPUT_TO_DBMS

The DEC PDP-10 had 36 bit words, so DEC TOPS COBOL had 6 x 6-bit ASCII
UPPER CASE CHARACTERS PER WORD. (WHO NEEDS LOWER CASE?)
DEC TOPS Fortran by contrast had discovered mixed case and had 5 x 7-bit
ASCII per word. (But the bit left over was mantissa lsb, not sign, so was
pretty much useless as a out of band marker.)

We're looking to migrate away eventually, maybe anyone with experience
> there? I'd love to hear any stories about COBOL or old enterprise mainframe
> applications you've worked with. We're probably going to be hiring soon too
> if anyone would be interested in a similar gig. :)
>

Early in the new century, my old financials shop was looking to replace two
overlapping business critical applications, one Mainframe COBOL and one VMS
COBOL,  with something new.  (We'd already replaced the PL/1 application
running on Stratus.) Eventually* instead of paying a vendor to upgrade
their Unix/Linux C++ app with Java UI to handle the needed features, the
vendor for the IBM M/F COBOL app added the features needed to retire the
VMS app.  (I didn't directly touch the Mainframe, but dealt with the
problems of transferring LRECL EBCDIC files to CRLF ASCII Unix/Linux hosts
and vice versa, as well as App/OS/HW interface/capacity issues on
Unix/Linux platforms. Much hilarity with file transfers.)

*Eventually = I think they finally finished??

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1...@gmail.com bric...@theperlshop.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
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Re: COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-06 Thread Ken D'Ambrosio 

On 2020-01-06 22:44, R. Anthony Lomartire wrote:


So I recently landed a job working in COBOL on HP-UX. It's been a trip!


Oh, man.  You just had to go there.  Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I
*do* have a COBOL on HP-UX story.  I was working at a startup c. 2002,
and we wanted to use the PointMan ERP system on our HP-UX hosts.  (Linux
wasn't yet an option for PointMan.)  So I, a relative HP-UX neophyte,
ordered COBOL for some thousands of dollars.  I got, in a FedEx
envelope: one (1) sheet of paper with one (1) serial number and a phone
number to order more stuff. 

Period. 


I mean, silly me.  For a couple of thousand bucks, I'd expected install
media, release notes, some accompanying documentation.  *SOMETHING*  So
I call the phone number and am like, "What in the world do I *do* with
this??"  They transfer me to another number.  Which transfers me to
another number.  Which transfers me to another number.  Who gives me a
number they promise will be able to help.  It's only after I hang up
that I realize it's the first number I'd called -- the one on the piece
of paper.  At this point, I begin to doubt my sanity. 
Oh -- and did I mention the ERP system, itself, cost something north of

$150K, and I had the CFO breathing down my neck to get it installed,
like, yesterday? 
I finally find some poor woman who's at least, like, *heard* of COBOL. 
And she gets me to people who are willing to help me -- if I pay the

$750 (? -- I think that's right) maintenance fee.  So I do.  And get
connected with a very helpful engineer who explains the software is on
the install media that *came with the system*; I just needed the serial
number to activate it. 
"Except, oh, yeah, YOUR version of the install media has a bug, and

COBOL won't install.  I need to mail you a file."
"So, you mean, even if I knew HP-UX super-duper well, I *STILL* wouldn't
have been able to install it?"
"Yeah, that about sums it up." 


Again: release notes.  Errata.  An fscking URL.  ANYTHING.  I wrote our
HP rep a letter the likes of which I generally try not to write.  He
called me up and asked what he could do to make it right.  I said that
was impossible, but implored him not to screw over other customers. 


That's a top-five most-frustrating-thing ever.  I sincerely hope that
things have changed in the intervening time. 

-Ken 

This stuff is from before my time but it's been really interesting to learn. Have any of you folks worked with this stuff? We're looking to migrate away eventually, maybe anyone with experience there? I'd love to hear any stories about COBOL or old enterprise mainframe applications you've worked with. We're probably going to be hiring soon too if anyone would be interested in a similar gig. :) 
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COBOL on HPUX

2020-01-06 Thread R. Anthony Lomartire 
So I recently landed a job working in COBOL on HP-UX. It's been a trip!
This stuff is from before my time but it's been really interesting to
learn. Have any of you folks worked with this stuff? We're looking to
migrate away eventually, maybe anyone with experience there? I'd love to
hear any stories about COBOL or old enterprise mainframe applications
you've worked with. We're probably going to be hiring soon too if anyone
would be interested in a similar gig. :)
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