For Bill Mayo - looking for current email address

[tomsalwasser]

I'm still able to function as a computer programmer, but only by cloning some of my older programs

Hey Fred are you working in Cobol?

[fredsheldon]

Hey Fred are you working in Cobol?

Cobol/CICS on MainFrames. Been coding Cobol since 1973.

[billmayo]

Cobol/CICS on MainFrames. Been coding Cobol since 1973.

Brings back old memories. In 1976, I was working for belt-way bandit company writing and maintaining Cobol programs for NavShips. We hired a fighter pilot with a PHD to head the 3 person programming dept. Within 6 months, he upset these people to where they took all (hundreds) of the printouts and tapes, piled them in the parking lot and had a huge fire. Of course, the 3 programmers disappeared from the area. Al we had left was the exculpable binary disk files and the IBM 360 computer. I was at the local college taking night programming courses so was asked to retrieve the coding from the disks so the programs could be modified for later updates. It took me 6 months and 10,000 punch cards (5 boxes) to write a program that restored the Cobol language from the disk files having no idea of what was being asked of me. This program ran for 24 hours on the IBM 360 for each program on the disk and we were able to retrieve all the programs over the next year. I had to continue to make some changes to my program during this time. I know we could not find a commercial program at that time to accomplish this task. This was one of my best fun times as my college computer professor (PHD) said it was impossible to do when I asked him.

[tomsalwasser]

Cobol/CICS on MainFrames. Been coding Cobol since 1973.

Fred I'm glad to hear that the rumors of the death of Cobol have been greatly exaggerated. How much demand for Cobol skills are you seeing out there?

It took me 6 months and 10,000 punch cards (5 boxes) to write a program that restored the Cobol language from the disk files

Bill it's a darn good thing you didn't listen to your professor when he said it couldn't be done. You must have been writing assembler code to reverse engineer the executables back into Cobol source code?

[billmayo]

Fred I'm glad to hear that the rumors of the death of Cobol have been greatly exaggerated. How much demand for Cobol skills are you seeing out there?



Bill it's a darn good thing you didn't listen to your professor when he said it couldn't be done. You must have been writing assembler code to reverse engineer the executables back into Cobol source code?

For the previous 15 years, I had been repairing Navy computers and had done lots of various assembler language programming and trouble shooting. Yes, my program was written in IBM assembler code. Cobol was the first high level language of many that I have learned. This task converted me to full time work in computer programming in various high level programming languages and using assembler for short quick programs. Those were the fun days.

[JPG]

For the previous 15 years, I had been repairing Navy computers and had done lots of various assembler language programming and trouble shooting. Yes, my program was written in IBM assembler code. Cobol was the first high level language of many that I have learned. This task converted me to full time work in computer programming in various high level programming languages and using assembler for short quick programs. Those were the fun days.

Impressive task!

Were you able to retrieve the comments also!:D

[BuckeyeDennis]

Brings back old memories. In 1976, I was working for belt-way bandit company writing and maintaining Cobol programs for NavShips. We hired a fighter pilot with a PHD to head the 3 person programming dept. Within 6 months, he upset these people to where they took all (hundreds) of the printouts and tapes, piled them in the parking lot and had a huge fire. Of course, the 3 programmers disappeared from the area. Al we had left was the exculpable binary disk files and the IBM 360 computer. I was at the local college taking night programming courses so was asked to retrieve the coding from the disks so the programs could be modified for later updates. It took me 6 months and 10,000 punch cards (5 boxes) to write a program that restored the Cobol language from the disk files having no idea of what was being asked of me. This program ran for 24 hours on the IBM 360 for each program on the disk and we were able to retrieve all the programs over the next year. I had to continue to make some changes to my program during this time. I know we could not find a commercial program at that time to accomplish this task. This was one of my best fun times as my college computer professor (PHD) said it was impossible to do when I asked him.

Back around 1978, I had a programming professor who told the story of a big program (manifested as a really big box of a few thousand ordered punch cards, for any whippersnappers out there ) being dropped, and hopelessly scrambled. He was quite proud of himself for writing another program to read in the newly "randomized" cards, and then automatically punch new ones in the proper order. That is NOTHING compared to what you accomplished, Bill.

[fredsheldon]

Brings back old memories. In 1976, I was working for belt-way bandit company writing and maintaining Cobol programs for NavShips. We hired a fighter pilot with a PHD to head the 3 person programming dept. Within 6 months, he upset these people to where they took all (hundreds) of the printouts and tapes, piled them in the parking lot and had a huge fire. Of course, the 3 programmers disappeared from the area. Al we had left was the exculpable binary disk files and the IBM 360 computer. I was at the local college taking night programming courses so was asked to retrieve the coding from the disks so the programs could be modified for later updates. It took me 6 months and 10,000 punch cards (5 boxes) to write a program that restored the Cobol language from the disk files having no idea of what was being asked of me. This program ran for 24 hours on the IBM 360 for each program on the disk and we were able to retrieve all the programs over the next year. I had to continue to make some changes to my program during this time. I know we could not find a commercial program at that time to accomplish this task. This was one of my best fun times as my college computer professor (PHD) said it was impossible to do when I asked him.

Oh yes, heaven help you if you dropped a deck of cards which were not sequenced and had to figure out the original order. In those days, those punch cards were the only backup for the source code. Remember how you had to hand in your source code on paper and the keypunch operator punched your cards for you. We weren't allowed to keypunch our own cards. The big day was when we were able to use CRT's to key our source code. Overnight IBM Punch cards and 029 punch machines became obsolete. And no tears were lost, I assure you. Yes Bill, those were fun days for sure. 16K main memory mainframes In our agency we were supposed to be off the mainframe and Cobol 10 years ago. Java and Web based applications were the future. Only problem, you can't hire and keep Java Programmers for $35,000 to $60,000 (max) per year. The State won't adjust their pay scales so they are stuck with us old Cobol programmers for years to come. it's a good thing this job is just extra spending money for me or I would have been gone long ago. Keep the old stories coming Bill.

[JPG]

Back around 1978, I had a programming professor who told the story of a big program (manifested as a really big box of a few thousand ordered punch cards, for any whippersnappers out there ] That is NOTHING compared to what you accomplished,[/B] Bill.

Indeed!!!!

Did he not have a card sorter???????

[tomsalwasser]

We used to put a diagonal stripe in magic marker on the sides of our punch card decks. That way if you dropped your deck you could get it sorted kinda sorta close pretty quickly by hand.