[Info-vax] First ship poll: When will the first native x86-64 compilers ship ?

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 4/17/22 12:52, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 4/17/2022 9:05 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 4/16/22 20:26, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 4/16/2022 6:54 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> On 4/16/22 18:09, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>> On 4/16/2022 7:28 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>>>> Like maybe, IBM zSystem running COBOL with CICS and a DB2 backend.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't see that combo as special.
>>>>>
>>>>> CGI scripts in Cobol or PL/I would require the developers
>>>>> to write maybe 10 times as much code and the result would
>>>>> perform really bad.
>>>>>
>>>>> Java or Python frontend calling C wrapper calling Cobol
>>>>> or PL/I code may be doable, but comes with a lot of risks
>>>>> due to potentially incompatible threading/transactional/whatever
>>>>> models.
>>>>
>>>> Why would you need all of that?  COBOL does CICS and CICS does
>>>> the web.  No extra code required.
>>>
>>> That sounds pretty easy.
>>>
>>> But if we assume RESTful web services which are by far the
>>> most common today.
>>>
>>> 1) How does CICS know the right URL to assign to a resource?
>>> 2) How does CICS know whether to use path or query URL?
>>> 3) How does CICS know whether to do XML or JSON or both?
>>> 4) How does CICS know whether to do CORS?
>>>
>>
>> Can't answer that because I haven't a clue what your talking about.
> 
> Then how can you claim that no extra code is needed??

Because it is all done in the COBOL program using CICS and DB2.
Granted, you can't write a version of Candy Crush Saga but all
I ever cared about was real work.

> 
>> I'm not a web developer.  I do real programming.
> 
> CORS are only for web programming, but the first 3 are not
> specific for web programming.
> 
> These types of services are the building blocks that
> financial systems, ERP systems, administrative systems
> etc. are build from today.

Or, maybe a  lot of fluff that really isn't needed to get the
job done but makes great marketing.

> 
> It does not get much more real programming than that.

It does when the desire is to get rids of the fluff and only
sell the customer what they really needed.

> 
> To some extent you can consider it the modern equivalent
> of calling conventions.

I guess because I started out long before bloatware became the
standard I see things a little differently.

> 
>>>> As for the non-IBM side.  I have done a number of proof of
>>>> concept COBOL <-> WEB systems back in my academia days.
>>>> It's actually easier than PHP. Cleaner than PHP.  Easier to
>>>> understand than PHP.  And definitely more secure than PHP.
>>>
>>> CGI scripts or?
>>
>> I guess some would call it that, but what I did weren't "scripts",
>> they were real programs.
> 
> CGI script just specify the mechanism used between the web server
> and the application code.
> 
> It can be DCL/Perl/whatever or C/Cobol/Fotran/whatever.
> 
> It has been obsolete for serious usage in 2 decades.

Yeah,, I keep hearing how COBOL and Fortran etc. are all dead.
funny how that never seems to come about.  Oh yeah, and BYTE
Magazine announced the death of Unix at least 30 years ago.
One can only hope that the current move to take IT education
out of the hands of academia may eventually bring the industry
back to its senses.

bill