[Info-vax] Licenses on VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source code listing scans

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/13/21 9:34 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 12/13/2021 3:44 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 12/13/21 1:26 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> Computer Science never liked Cobol - they were on the Algol
>>> and Pascal wagon back in the 60's and 70's.
>>
>> There was no CS in the 60's and only later in the 70's  It was
>> just a sideline for math departments.
> 
> Purdue University Computer Science Department was established in 1962.
> 
> https://www.cs.purdue.edu/history/index.html
> 

I am sure there were a few early adopters.  But but In 1980 I
worked at West Point.  They had a Geography & Computer Science
Department.  When I later moved to the University of Scranton
their CS department had started as courses offered by the Math
Department and all of the origin CS faculty came from moved from
the Math Department.

>>                                      In any event, most CS
>> departments had two tracks CS and CIS.  CS played with Unix
>> and C and CIS was COBOL, PL/1 (in IBM dominated areas like
>> Marist College) and even some RPG and 360 BAL.
> 
> Somebody had to teach languages used.

Exactly.  Until they decided not to teach the languages used and
started trying to force a change to the languages being used.  In
the case of COBOL, they failed.  BUt they still won't teach it.
There are other legacy languages still in use that are not taught.
An ideal opportunity for trade schools to step up, fill the gap
and save students a fortune in un-needed debt.

> 
>>> Lesser academic educations teaching programming typical
>>> dropped Cobol in the 90's due to lack of demand.
>>
>> We kept a COBOL course on the books well into the 90's but it
>> was never offered.  COBOL was used in a mandatory (for both CS
>> and CIS programs) course, Until the early 2000's.
> 
> That was later than most places, but ...

Yes, it was.  I did the same thing with VMS but one can't swim
upstream forever.

> 
>>                                                It was done
>> using DEC COBOL until the day they made me remove the last VMS
>> machines from my data center.  It was not unsuitability that
>> resulted in these changes it was politics.  Both VMS and COBOL
>> were seen as "legacy". Something the students shouldn't even
>> be introduced to.  VMS was easier to get rid of because all
>> they had to do was tell me to get rid of the hardware.  COBOL
>> took a little longer (and a lot more work) because the course
>> using it had to be redone.
>>
>>> Cobol first got OO features in 2002.
>>>
>>> It is pretty obvious from the timeline that lack of interest
>>> in OO Cobol was not the reason for Cobol's missing presence
>>> in education.
>>
>> Really?  Then where do you assign the blame?
> 
> Lack of demand for the skill.

Except that the demand is still there.  General Dynamics (who
maintain the DOD EMR I mentioned) once offered internships for
undergrad students because they were finding it necessary to
train their own COBOL programmers.  They would take any student
who had at least the basic undergrad intro course and the ad
claimed they would teach them COBOL on the job.  I can tell
you that the some of the faculty where I was told the students
not to apply.

> 
> Most students know somebody in the industry and if they hear
> that companies hire C, C++, Java, Delphi, VB6 (late 90's!) then
> they do not go for Cobol. Most students want to work with the
> new growing languages not with old declining languages.

And, thus, miss out on some very good opportunities.  Those
government positions I mentioned offer, as well as good pay,
one of the best retirement plans in existence, very good health
care and more time off than most private businesses.  As well
as long term stability.  It is virtually impossible to lose
a government job unless you opt to quit.  I can give you some
really good anecdotes to support that, too, from personal
experience.  :-)

> 
> The fact that there may a great career in old languages
> because old code tend to continue running for decade after decade
> rarely appeals to students.

Again, my experience differs.  I used to sit and chat with my
students in the labs and many of them verified the things I
was telling them about COBOL.  But, sadly, they were still
left with no training and most people will take the job they
know how to do over the one they don't.  Even if they really
could learn it easily.

> 
> And that some of the then growing languages went in decline pretty
> quickly (Delphi and VB6 turned out to decline faster than Cobol!)
> was also not considered.

So it is with most language du jour.  There are still a lot of
Fortran jobs out there, too. But like COBOL you need to search
for them.

> 
>>> Computer science did push OOP back in the 80's and 90's. But
>>> the industry was very much involved as well (Apple: object-pascal
>>> and objective-c; Borland: later Turbo Pascal, Delphi;
>>> Microsoft: C++; SUN: C++, Java). And even some of the
>>> academic research was funded by the industry (AT&T, Xerox etc.), so
>>> OO is not an academic thing.
>>
>> It started there and once they stopped teaching non-OOP pardigms
>> what did the people coming out to places like AT&T, Apple, Xerox,
>> etc. know other than OOP?
> 
> When they did their research back in the 80's everybody knew
> procedural programming. They wanted to do something differently.

Even if it didn't really apply to the needed tasks.

> 
>>> And it has thrived because of the value it provides - not because
>>> universities pushed it. The last 10-20 years Computer Science
>>> has pushed FP not OOP. But true FP has never really caught on
>>> in the industry. Most OOP languages got a few FP features and
>>> they are used for convenience, but not enough to be true FP.
>>
>> Sadly, I think OOP is going to be here a long time.  I am just
>> glad the people working where it is not a good fit have resisted
>> it.  I still do COBOL.  Mostly just for fun, but it is still
>> interesting.  You should go over to Rosetta Code and see all the
>> things COBOL does that aren't even in its wheelhouse.
> 
> Cobol was intended as a business application language but it is
> enough general purpose to that almost everything can be done
> in it.

Exactly.  I  have done some COBOL stuff for Rosetta Code and
it's really fun.  May do another one today.  Of course, I also
do DIBOL-11, MACRO-11, Ratfor and Basic09.  And, I am thinking
of doing some Logo (I have gotten back into Logo because my 8
year old grandson wants to learn "coding" and Logo is an ideal
language for teaching the basics to someone his age).  If there
was an available PL/I compiler I would probably do a bunch in
that, too.  The fun of being a dinosaur.

bill