4 ms·

I am a 3rd generation programmer, my grandmother programmed with punch cards, my father on mainframes, I do things now, and my child looks to be a 4th one. When

I am a 3rd generation programmer, my grandmother programmed with punch cards, my father on mainframes, I do things now, and my child looks to be a 4th one. When we came here my father brushed off his COBOL skills during Y2K stuff and made some excellent money working at some hospital chain fixing things. Right before New Year 2000 I ask him half in jest - "so hey, should I be sick on New Year"? He looks at me, smiles, and says "you can, but not too sick, ok?". I am wondering if I'd be recompiling int32 to int64 out of systems and changing database datatypes in 10+ years and answering similar questions from my kids

panzi 4y ago
I think any somewhat actively maintained software should be fixed by now, except devices that aren't seen as computers by the users and don't even have update mechanisms. And old COBOL programs running on some bank's mainframe, of course. Did your dad teach you COBOL?
- bluesmoon 4y ago
  COBOL programs will be fine. They use 4 characters just for the year since it's stored as the decimal characters. I was trained in COBOL in the late 90s to work on Y2K migrations. It's done this way so that COBOL programs stored on punched cards are readable (also why COBOL has its line-length limitations).
  - __d 4y ago
    Except for the programs where it was too hard to change to 4 digit years, and we just shifted the epoch ...
- danielodievich 4y ago
  No, I never learned COBOL. I learn some programming from him when I was like 7 or 8, some language one would never have heard of called FOCAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(programming_language) which was ripped off from DEC by the soviets for their little BK-0010 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BK0010 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BK0010 and which I mostly used to play games loaded from tapes. Mostly I just really liked computers, just like him. He didn't stick with mainframe programming after the Y2K passed, I think he could have continued but he was bored...

panzi 4y ago

I think any somewhat actively maintained software should be fixed by now, except devices that aren't seen as computers by the users and don't even have update mechanisms. And old COBOL programs running on some bank's mainframe, of course. Did your dad teach you COBOL?

bluesmoon 4y ago
COBOL programs will be fine. They use 4 characters just for the year since it's stored as the decimal characters. I was trained in COBOL in the late 90s to work on Y2K migrations. It's done this way so that COBOL programs stored on punched cards are readable (also why COBOL has its line-length limitations).
- __d 4y ago
  Except for the programs where it was too hard to change to 4 digit years, and we just shifted the epoch ...
danielodievich 4y ago
No, I never learned COBOL. I learn some programming from him when I was like 7 or 8, some language one would never have heard of called FOCAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(programming_language) which was ripped off from DEC by the soviets for their little BK-0010 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BK0010 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BK0010 and which I mostly used to play games loaded from tapes. Mostly I just really liked computers, just like him. He didn't stick with mainframe programming after the Y2K passed, I think he could have continued but he was bored...