4 ms·
> Instead, the sector faces the real threat of a shortage of one of its most crucial resources: programmers who possess legacy skills in older programming langu
by daeken 15y ago
> Instead, the sector faces the real threat of a shortage of one of its most crucial resources: programmers who possess legacy skills in older programming languages, such as Cobol and Assembler.
Saying "assembler" is a language is like saying that "Romantic" is a language. Are you talking about PDP-8, x86, ARM, MIPS, SPARC, ... ? Also, having spent the previous night doing nothing but writing assembly (to patch machine code, no less), I suddenly feel very old.
- seanstickle 15y agoIn the context of COBOL, the natural assumption would be mainframe Assembler of the S/390 variety. Which is a distinct language, not the class of assembly programming.
- ordinary 15y agoYou're right, of course, but this is not a tech site. In this case, I think it's reasonable to use the more familiar term. It's a bit like Lisp; it's not technically a language, but everyone knows what you mean. [edit]Or seanstickle could be right. COBOL was invented before my mother was even born, so this isn't exactly my area of expertise. ;)
- wglb 15y agoWhen you hear COBOL and Assembler in the same sentence, you should (in addition to releasing the safety on your browning) presume 360/370/zOS. Turns out my brother-in-law is well versed in all the languages, as he works on a key cross-platform IBM product. He also is a whiz with reading core dumps.