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

[bill]

On 11/5/2023 12:47 PM, 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 piles of jobs for them.  All the current crop are retiring.
I just mentioned above a multi million dollar a year project that had
to be abandoned for lack of programmers?  And why was that?  They even
tried a strong internship program to bring in second and third year
undergrads they would teach COBOL.  I put up the flyers all over the
CS Department where I worked.  I talked with students about it,  And
all this time one of the Professors went around telling the students
not to do it.  And refusing to sign off on their internship program
to fulfill the internship requirement for the degree.  I expect it was
treated the same at other CS Departments.  Any student who had gone into
this program was guaranteed a very high paying job upon graduation.

> 
> 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.

If it is already written in COBOL why would you need to re-write
it in COBOL?

> 
> 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.

Numerous surveys have shown that while new front ends in other
languages are being done so is a lot of new COBOL.  I have less
experience and knowledge with current day Fortran but I do know
of a number of large engineering com0panies that still use it.
And not just to keep those VAX programs running.  :-)


> 
> All the less critical but developer time consuming
> code in UI and reporting are long gone.

UI's, yes.  But then COBOL was never much n UI's anyway.  That's
why web programming stuff was added to CICS ages ago.  IBM certainly
knew that the web would replace all those 3270's.  And, I have done
web front ends for COBOL.  Time changes that doesn't mean the language
become useless.  Not much done with ISAM nowadays. BUt DB's fit right
in.

> 
> 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.

By "we have a problem" I assume you are referencing the infamous New
Jersey State Employment Agency case.  Too bad people stopped talking
about it before it turned out to not be a COBOL problem at all but a
web front end problem.

bill