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When I used to ride the train to work a few years ago, one of the happiest appearing people I met on the train was a young (30 something) COBOL programmer. He w
by cicero 9y ago
When I used to ride the train to work a few years ago, one of the happiest appearing people I met on the train was a young (30 something) COBOL programmer. He was examining a green-bar fan-fold printout of COBOL code that was part of the back-end of a gas station point-of-sale system. He told me that there had been an issue with a transaction the night before and he was going to try to solve it that day.
- the_af 9y agoSure, I spent my time figuring out COBOL code (thankfully, code printouts were already going out of fashion back in 1998, when I had that job. I can't for the life of me picture someone reading a printout today. Then again, I still occasionally see middle-aged people reading printed emails in the subway. Go figure) and of course solving problems is exhilarating! I'm just saying being forced to use COBOL sucks, because it's uninteresting and outdated technology, and mostly nobody would choose it of their own volition, so most COBOL use falls in the category of "being forced to use it". Interest in retrocomputing aside... and there's better retro stuff to be interested in, anyway!
- flavio81 9y ago> (thankfully, code printouts were already going out of fashion back in 1998, when I had that job. I can't for the life of me picture someone reading a printout today. For me, the best way to review source code is to have it printed, where it is easy to annotate. In fact i think i will buy me a printer at home for the very same purpose.
- 35bge57dtjku 9y agoMake it a dot matrix printer that you can hear from 2 floors up.
- athom 9y agoTractor feed, 11x17 fanfold greenbar FTW!
- mikestew 9y agoI cast a +1 one-upmanship spell and invoke the line printer. Those things probably had lead ingots in the bottom so that they wouldn't walk across the room. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1403 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1403
- the_af 9y agoIt's easy to annotate code using modern interactive tools, and even easier to share these annotations with other people. Plus, modern tools also let you inspect the code, analyze usage, etc.
- 1024core 9y agoI think the greenbar fanfold was a great way to review code. Instead of being limited to ~100 lines on the screen, you could see the entire file at once, jumping from piece to piece, and annotating it with a pen.
- the_af 9y agoI prefer to use an IDE with tooltips showing types, usage discovery, and where I can jump to a definition with just a click. Seriously, code printouts are an outdated -- and worse, wasteful -- tool. Maybe they were suitable in COBOL's heyday, but not today.