[Info-vax] Bliss was Re: Learning VMS application programming

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2014-09-09 16:58, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <lums63$f9g$1 at dont-email.me>,
> 	John H. Reinhardt <johnhreinhardt at yahoo.com> writes:
>> On 2014-09-08 12:16:28 -0400, Bill Gunshannon said:
>>
>>> In article <lukibf$bqm$1 at dont-email.me>,
>>> 	David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> It wasn't too long ago that there was a thread on the use of PDP-11s in
>>>> Canadian nuclear power stations, and included if I recall correctly,
>>>> their intention in continuing doing so for some time into the future.
>>>> Not sure if 50 years was mentioned.
>>>
>>> It wasn't a Canadian Nuclear Plant.  It was GE who manufactures, sells
>>> and maintains Nuclear Power Plants in a lot of places.
>>>>
>>>> "The right tool for the job" can be a good path to follow, and the
>>>> PDP-11s do some jobs very well.
>>>
>>> I would love to see their spare parts facility.  But they would probably
>>> get upset at all the drooling I would be doing.
>>>
>>> bill
>>
>> It might not be what you expect.  I work as a contractor to GE and it
>> wasn't that long ago in our Monday morning conferences about what went
>> wrong the previous weekend there would often be incidents involving PDP
>> systems, but they were all emulated on x86 hardware.  Now, this was for
>> GE Rail so may not apply to the Nuclear division (They had a different
>> conference), but it's possible.
>
> Well, the general feeling in the PDP-11 communities where I tend to
> hang out are that they are still doing PDP-11 because the time and
> cost to get a different system validated is probably prohibitive if
> not totally impossible.  Emulated systems would come under the same
> umbrella as a new system.  There are probably not that many existing
> systems but the cost of maintaining them is certainly enough to make
> it profitable for those doing it.
>
> If you think finding COBOL programmers is hard what do you think the
> availability of MACRO-11 programmers is like?  :-)

Meh. I program MACRO-11 almost every day already... It's not hard. :-)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol