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This link is a gem. It is very revealing of the dynamics of arguments over software in the airline industry. > A number of financial institutions have discov

This link is a gem. It is very revealing of the dynamics of arguments over software in the airline industry. > A number of financial institutions have discovered and acknowledged this fact and are now taking the first steps to address this situation by making the decision to go back to z/TPF, z/OS and UNIX because of their bulletproof reliability and transaction processing capabilities. This to the chagrin of the bulk of their application development staffs who are bolting out of these organizations for the more sexy technology environments. Yes, IBM Assembler, COBOL and other antique languages are making a resurgence at these brave organizations as they supplant and even replace Java, .NET, Python and other development environments. Back to the good old days of IBM Assembler?! Are they ditching source control and unit testing too?

pc86 8y ago
I used to work at a healthcare company where about 1/3 of the development staff worked in RPG and COBOL day-to-day. A consultant came in to pitch them on a COBOL source control system, and from what I heard they had to spend most of the time explaining to these 60+ year olds what source control was before pitching the management on a 7-figure implementation for what was basically timestamped folders with copied of code inside. When I left that company a few years after that, there was still no source control for the RPG or COBOL code.
- Xixi 8y ago
  I have to chime in and display my ignorance: what makes RPG or COBOL so special that git or mercurial could not simply be used for source control?
  - snaky 8y ago
    Technically, nothing. "Using Visual COBOL in Modern Application Development" https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/visual-cobol/visualcobol30/VC_for_VS_in_Modern_App_Dev.pdf https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/visual-cobol/visual...
- _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
  I know a large organization which has a lot of code in an Oracle cluster. No version control, no tests, no development environment.
snaky 8y ago
> Back to the good old days of IBM Assembler?! High Level Assembler to be correct. But kidding aside, the slide 40-41 is interesting http://www.ibm.com/software/htp/tpf/tpfug/tgf18/TPFUG_2018_MAIN.pdf http://www.ibm.com/software/htp/tpf/tpfug/tgf18/TPFUG_2018_M...

pc86 8y ago

I used to work at a healthcare company where about 1/3 of the development staff worked in RPG and COBOL day-to-day. A consultant came in to pitch them on a COBOL source control system, and from what I heard they had to spend most of the time explaining to these 60+ year olds what source control was before pitching the management on a 7-figure implementation for what was basically timestamped folders with copied of code inside. When I left that company a few years after that, there was still no source control for the RPG or COBOL code.

Xixi 8y ago
I have to chime in and display my ignorance: what makes RPG or COBOL so special that git or mercurial could not simply be used for source control?
- snaky 8y ago
  Technically, nothing. "Using Visual COBOL in Modern Application Development" https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/visual-cobol/visualcobol30/VC_for_VS_in_Modern_App_Dev.pdf https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/visual-cobol/visual...
_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
I know a large organization which has a lot of code in an Oracle cluster. No version control, no tests, no development environment.

snaky 8y ago

> Back to the good old days of IBM Assembler?! High Level Assembler to be correct. But kidding aside, the slide 40-41 is interesting http://www.ibm.com/software/htp/tpf/tpfug/tgf18/TPFUG_2018_MAIN.pdf http://www.ibm.com/software/htp/tpf/tpfug/tgf18/TPFUG_2018_M...