[Info-vax] OpenVMS async I/O, fast vs. slow

[abrsvc]

On Sunday, November 5, 2023 at 12:47:21 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 11/5/2023 10:58 AM, bill wrote: 
> > In 1980 I was a COBOL Programmer/Systems Analyst on IBM and Univac 
> > Mainframes.  Trade journals were already saying "COBOL is dead". 
> > And yet, it went on.  Two of the largest ISes in the country (probably 
> > the world) were COBOL. Still are today and there is no plan or sign that 
> > they will ever be replaced with another language.  There was a third. 
> > Contractor opted to not renew and the program died.  Not because of any 
> > flaws in COBOL but because academia refuses to teach it even as an 
> > elective.  System belonged to the contractor so stayed with them.  New 
> > system written from scratch in god only knows what language, Some 
> > language du jour.  The new system is slow, cumbersome, error prone and 
> > lacks many of the features that the old system had. 
> > 
> > We have so many "colleges" teaching trade school courses (like diesel 
> > mechanics, HVAC welding and even motorcycle mechanics)I really wish 
> > trade schools would step up to the plate ad start teaching IT and in 
> > particular thing like COBOL, Fortran and PL/I.  They are not going away.
> There is not much point, because there will not be jobs 
> for them. 
> 
> There are a lot of Cobol and PL/I code in production doing 
> usually highly business critical stuff. 
> 
> But if cost and risk are too high to rewrite to C++ 
> or Java or C# or whatever, then the risk of 
> rewriting it in Cobol is also too high. 
> 
> So instead the new functionality is put in 
> secondary systems using newer technology and 
> only changes that has to be done in the core 
> are done there. 
> 
> All the less critical but developer time consuming 
> code in UI and reporting are long gone. 
> 
> As a result the demand is small. 
> 
> It is not zero but despite the frequent "we have 
> a problem" announcements, then it seems like they can 
> keep and hire+train the people they need for 
> maintenance. 
> 
> Arne

The demand these days is a little different as well.

I am currently working with 2 clients using PL/I code.  They no longer have PL/I expertise onsite and don't know how to modify the existing code in one case, and don't know what the code does in the other case.  Nice work for me, but it would be nice if there were resources for such tasks more readily available...

Dan