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OT: Newsgroup Name Change?
|
|
| Alistair 2007-01-11, 6:55 pm |
| In view of the declining popularity of Cobol might I suggest a name
change to the newsgroup that may aid in boosting the popularity of the
language amongst the youthfull members of the IT world?
I have previously suggested that we should change the Cobol spelling to
Kobol (because all  modern applications/utilities related to
Unix/Linux appear to begin with the letter K (eg Kermit, etc.).
A common English colloquial term meaning language is the word lingo.
An abbreviation of newsgroup would (in line with the modern trend to
become backwards incompatible with assembler) be the letter n.
Keeping to the sequence so far, we would derive:
K.LINGO.N
Any takers?
| |
|
| Alistair wrote:
> In view of the declining popularity of Cobol might I suggest a name
> change to the newsgroup that may aid in boosting the popularity of the
> language amongst the youthfull members of the IT world?
>
> I have previously suggested that we should change the Cobol spelling to
> Kobol (because all modern applications/utilities related to
> Unix/Linux appear to begin with the letter K (eg Kermit, etc.).
>
> A common English colloquial term meaning language is the word lingo.
>
> An abbreviation of newsgroup would (in line with the modern trend to
> become backwards incompatible with assembler) be the letter n.
>
> Keeping to the sequence so far, we would derive:
>
>
> K.LINGO.N
>
>
> Any takers?
Nah - Starfleet would never go for that...
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ / \ / ~ Live from Montgomery, AL! ~
~ / \/ o ~ ~
~ / /\ - | ~ daniel@thebelowdomain ~
~ _____ / \ | ~ http://www.djs-consulting.com ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ GEEKCODE 3.12 GCS/IT d s-:+ a C++ L++ E--- W++ N++ o? K- w$ ~
~ !O M-- V PS+ PE++ Y? !PGP t+ 5? X+ R* tv b+ DI++ D+ G- e ~
~ h---- r+++ z++++ ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Who is more irrational? A man who believes in a God he doesn't see, or
a man who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?" - Brad Stine
| |
|
| In article <1168557657.451028.88840@o58g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>Any takers?
'Can ye carry a tune, man? Good... then carry th' one yer whistlin' out
back an' bury it!'
DD
| |
| Richard 2007-01-11, 9:55 pm |
|
Alistair wrote:
> I have previously suggested that we should change the Cobol spelling to
> Kobol (because all modern applications/utilities related to
> Unix/Linux appear to begin with the letter K (eg Kermit, etc.).
'Kermit' is as " and modern" as the Hoola Hoop or the Twist. I had
it on my BBC Micro.
The Linux 'K' Stuff is mostly related to KDE, the K Desktop
Environment: Konqueror, KWord, Klexi, Konsole, KAlarm, Karbon, ...
| |
| caederus@gmail.com 2007-01-12, 7:55 am |
| But hard core developers use "C" words, like C+, C++, C#...
A Couple of years ago when asked what our product was written in, a
Sales VP said it was C obol where the "obol" would be in a superscript
after the capital C.
Alistair wrote:
> In view of the declining popularity of Cobol might I suggest a name
> change to the newsgroup that may aid in boosting the popularity of the
> language amongst the youthfull members of the IT world?
>
> I have previously suggested that we should change the Cobol spelling to
> Kobol (because all modern applications/utilities related to
> Unix/Linux appear to begin with the letter K (eg Kermit, etc.).
>
> A common English colloquial term meaning language is the word lingo.
>
> An abbreviation of newsgroup would (in line with the modern trend to
> become backwards incompatible with assembler) be the letter n.
>
> Keeping to the sequence so far, we would derive:
>
>
> K.LINGO.N
>
>
> Any takers?
| |
|
| Alistair wrote:
> In view of the declining popularity of Cobol might I suggest a name
> change to the newsgroup that may aid in boosting the popularity of the
> language amongst the youthfull members of the IT world?
>
> I have previously suggested that we should change the Cobol spelling to
> Kobol (because all modern applications/utilities related to
> Unix/Linux appear to begin with the letter K (eg Kermit, etc.).
>
> A common English colloquial term meaning language is the word lingo.
>
> An abbreviation of newsgroup would (in line with the modern trend to
> become backwards incompatible with assembler) be the letter n.
>
> Keeping to the sequence so far, we would derive:
>
>
> K.LINGO.N
>
>
> Any takers?
>
Do these statistics from Gartner Group [Internet posting in Dec-2006]
sound like a "...declining popularity of COBOL"...?
>The following information was gathered from various Gartner reports:
>
>* There are 310 billion lines of legacy code operating in the world
> (65% of all software).
>* Five billion lines of new COBOL code are being written every year.
>* Fifteen percent of new application development is written in COBOL.
>* Thirty-four percent of coding activities are in COBOL.
>* Seventy-five percent of the world s business data resides on
> mainframe systems.
>* There are 38,000 legacy systems at more than 10,000 mainframe sites
> worldwide.
| |
| Clark F Morris 2007-01-12, 9:55 pm |
| On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:27:28 -0500, CG
<Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote:
[color=darkred]
>Alistair wrote:
>
>Do these statistics from Gartner Group [Internet posting in Dec-2006]
>sound like a "...declining popularity of COBOL"...?
>
Even though I just had a COBOL coding contract, I am seeing the
decline of COBOL. As old systems reach the end of life they are being
replaced by packages which probably are not written in COBOL (SAP
anyone?). Oracle's business language generated COBOL at one time but
I don't know what the current situation is. I don't trust Gartner
statistics and have the feeling from listening to Gartner
presentations that they are a hot air factory blowing in the wind. I
am not optimistic for the future of COBOL when the IBM COBOL team
can't understand why they need 64 bit capability because of long term
IBM strategy (Websphere and DB2 anyone?). I also want to see the
development environment equivalent to the one Pete Dashwood described
for C# available for COBOL before I change my mind.
| |
|
| Clark F Morris wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:27:28 -0500, CG
> <Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote:
>
>
> Even though I just had a COBOL coding contract, I am seeing the
> decline of COBOL. As old systems reach the end of life they are being
> replaced by packages which probably are not written in COBOL (SAP
> anyone?). Oracle's business language generated COBOL at one time but
> I don't know what the current situation is. I don't trust Gartner
> statistics and have the feeling from listening to Gartner
> presentations that they are a hot air factory blowing in the wind. I
> am not optimistic for the future of COBOL when the IBM COBOL team
> can't understand why they need 64 bit capability because of long term
> IBM strategy (Websphere and DB2 anyone?). I also want to see the
> development environment equivalent to the one Pete Dashwood described
> for C# available for COBOL before I change my mind.
Clark,
I don't know exactly what you mean by IBM position on adding 64-bit to
COBOL. Since you have not been to SHARE recently, possibly you have not
heard directly from IBM and are relying on hearsay. Their clear
statement has been, "Show me exactly what functions you cannot do
without the COBOL application having direct addressability to 64-bit
storage." This is the same position they have taken on almost every
new feature added to the compiler for the last 30 years. [Remember,
during most of that time, I was on the IBM side of the fence and had to
defend the IBM position to user groups.]
I have no doubt that, eventually, COBOL will have 64-bit addressability.
But, in the overall scheme of work that needs to be done by compiler
developers, 64-bit is not the top of the list. If/when someone comes up
with the 'killer application' that needs it AND the business case is
presented, you will see some action.
Frankly, as I look at the COBOL community today, I never cease to be
amazed at the number of OS/VS COBOL components that are only being
migrated because they will not run with the latest CICS and/or DB2. It
is not even 31-bit support that is driving these migrations. Likewise,
I see a huge number of COBOL II applications that are still running
RMODE(24) and thus not even exploiting 31-bit addressability when the
compiler does generate AMODE(31) code.
I know you have pushed your clients and applications to move on. But,
unfortunately, there are still too many shops that take the "if it ain't
broke, don't fix it" attitude.
I can see some cases where 64-bit would be advantageous. But, since I
am not the owner of these applications, any business case I might
develop is coming from a non-paying user. i.e., I don't count. If you
have a very specific business case, I urge you to document it to IBM.
If you would like me to present it to IBM via SHARE, I would be happy to
do so. And, you still have the ability to create SHARE requirements
where you have the opportunity to document your case to the rest of the
SHARE community and solicit their support for your position. But, I
assure you that, just complaining here on this NG is not going to make
any difference.
As far as the Gartner Group stats, that happened to be most recent stats
I've seen and they were the most convenient to cut/paste. Other studies
have produced similar numbers, though. Even if they are off slightly,
they are still very large numbers.
Carl
| |
| P. Raulerson 2007-01-13, 7:55 am |
|
"Clark F Morris" <cfmpublic@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:vrggq2pmo1kplo6rqsnjcibrocjhp42iv6@
4ax.com...
<snip>
Eh? Have you looked at WebSphere and the COBOL and Assembler development
environment it provides for the zSeries?
Cool stuff!
> Even though I just had a COBOL coding contract, I am seeing the
> decline of COBOL. As old systems reach the end of life they are being
> replaced by packages which probably are not written in COBOL (SAP
> anyone?). Oracle's business language generated COBOL at one time but
> I don't know what the current situation is. I don't trust Gartner
> statistics and have the feeling from listening to Gartner
> presentations that they are a hot air factory blowing in the wind. I
> am not optimistic for the future of COBOL when the IBM COBOL team
> can't understand why they need 64 bit capability because of long term
> IBM strategy (Websphere and DB2 anyone?). I also want to see the
> development environment equivalent to the one Pete Dashwood described
> for C# available for COBOL before I change my mind.
| |
|
| In article <vrggq2pmo1kplo6rqsnjcibrocjhp42iv6@4ax.com>,
Clark F Morris <cfmpublic@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:27:28 -0500, CG
><Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote:
[snip]
>
>Even though I just had a COBOL coding contract, I am seeing the
>decline of COBOL.
Funny you should mention that... for the first time in a Goodly While I
received a call from a pimp the other day. Granted it was from a young,
inexperienced pimp - perhaps more of a 'pimple'? - and it *was* on a
Friday afternoon, usually a time when young, inexperienced 'pimples' get
handed a stack of dusty, old bragsheets and told 'find out the status on
these folks'... I don't recall ever getting a contract as a result of a
Friday afternoon call...
.... but it was a call, nontheless... and just before the third w of
January, too, a time when the calendar as I know it shows an uptick in
business because everyone is realising that they haven't done a lick of
Real Work since just prior to Thanksgiving (a US holiday observed on the
fourth Thursday of November).
DD
| |
| Charles Hottel 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
|
<caederus@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1168604880.816593.267470@s34g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> But hard core developers use "C" words, like C+, C++, C#...
>
<snip>
COBOL a language by any other name would code as clear!
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
|
"CG" <Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote in message
news:ec05b$45a83582$d066072d$22651@FUSE.NET...[color=darkred]
> Alistair wrote:
>
> Do these statistics from Gartner Group [Internet posting in Dec-2006]
> sound like a "...declining popularity of COBOL"...?
>
So where are the jobs? (Gartner is a well biased organization with an
obvious vested interest in promoting COBOL; I see no problem with promoting
COBOL, but not when there is a commercial interest to do so, and the claims
are just rubbish....) The above simply insults the intelligence of anyone
who is interested in reality.
IBM claim that the average production of debugged working COBOL per day, is
around 30 lines. If there were half a million COBOL programmers in the
world, working an average 250 days a year ( and there aren't...not by a lomg
chalk...) it would take more than 80 years to attain the Gartner claim. This
is twice as long as the language has existed... even allowing for systems
that generate COBOL and doubling or tripling the assumed number of authors,
you will pardon my scepticism :-)
Anyone who takes the trouble to access any of the major job sites will see
just how "popular" COBOL is. If said person has been doing this for some
years, there can be no possible doubt as to which way the trend is going. In
fact, although I was expecting it 10 years ago, it has been steeper than I
anticipated.
If you rate being employed more than perceived popularity, it might be an
idea to gain some more skills... And some plain commonsense when looking at
statistics probably could be handy also...:-)
COBOL might well be the most useful language in the world for programming
commercial computer systems, but if it doesn't pay the rent, who cares?
Pete.
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
|
"CG" <Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote in message
news:156f7$45a86d2e$d066072d$20594@FUSE.NET...
> Clark F Morris wrote:
> Clark,
> I don't know exactly what you mean by IBM position on adding 64-bit to
> COBOL. Since you have not been to SHARE recently, possibly you have not
> heard directly from IBM and are relying on hearsay. Their clear statement
> has been, "Show me exactly what functions you cannot do without the COBOL
> application having direct addressability to 64-bit storage." This is the
> same position they have taken on almost every new feature added to the
> compiler for the last 30 years. [Remember, during most of that time, I
> was on the IBM side of the fence and had to defend the IBM position to
> user groups.]
>
That's like making a case for keeping horses, to Henry Ford...
I love the way people who don't want to do something will suggest a
committee be convened and a Business Case prepared. See it all the time...
But if the CEO decides he wants something (whether it makes "Business Sense"
or not) you don't find too many people saying... "Perhaps we should think
about this ... for forty years...." (Rather, they are falling over each
other to give him what he wants...)
I could just see someone suggesting to Henry that he should prepare a
business case to show why they should sell the horse and buy a car....
And yet, Henry obviously didn't listen. Guess it comes down to vision, in
the end.
> I have no doubt that, eventually, COBOL will have 64-bit addressability.
> But, in the overall scheme of work that needs to be done by compiler
> developers, 64-bit is not the top of the list.
That is a much fairer objection :-) But it still doesn't cut it. The amount
of work in moving from one back end architecture to another is not so
huge... compiler writing is all about the front end. A better question
would be "Should we be continuing to sink money into this development at
all?" If the user base is established and the compiler is generating revenue
it might be worth extracting a bit more juice from it... Maybe it needs a
Business Case to decide if it is viable :-)
> If/when someone comes up with the 'killer application' that needs it AND
> the business case is presented, you will see some action.
So, it won't be soon, then... :-)?
>
> Frankly, as I look at the COBOL community today, I never cease to be
> amazed at the number of OS/VS COBOL components that are only being
> migrated because they will not run with the latest CICS and/or DB2. It is
> not even 31-bit support that is driving these migrations. Likewise, I see
> a huge number of COBOL II applications that are still running RMODE(24)
> and thus not even exploiting 31-bit addressability when the compiler does
> generate AMODE(31) code.
And that's because there is inherent risk in change. I remember having the
virtues of running "above the line" extolled to me when AMODE(31) first
became available, but then we realized there were quite a number of apps
that simply wouldn't function if we implemented it. I seem to recall a
number of system housekeeing routines that required to run below the line.
Of course, once the system routines caught up and it was safe to do so, we
started using it. If IBM were to release a new compiler where everything
was designed for 64 bit, and all the infrastructure was in place, it is
very likely that many sites would adopt it.
I remember people resisting System 360 and continuing to run in 1401
compatibility mode. Then we saw the same thing with System 370... (Extended
registers and instruction set? What for? :-)) No-one wants to be first,
except the brave souls who have vision.
Sometimes they suffer for it, but if the vendor backed the move and provided
tools that people could have confidence in, there would be much less
resistance by the user base.
>
> I know you have pushed your clients and applications to move on. But,
> unfortunately, there are still too many shops that take the "if it ain't
> broke, don't fix it" attitude.
It comes down to vision... see above.
>
> I can see some cases where 64-bit would be advantageous. But, since I am
> not the owner of these applications, any business case I might develop is
> coming from a non-paying user. i.e., I don't count. If you have a very
> specific business case, I urge you to document it to IBM. If you would
> like me to present it to IBM via SHARE, I would be happy to do so. And,
> you still have the ability to create SHARE requirements where you have the
> opportunity to document your case to the rest of the SHARE community and
> solicit their support for your position. But, I assure you that, just
> complaining here on this NG is not going to make any difference.
Oh, I don't know... :-) If the issue gets raised, it gets discussed, and
from thought comes action.
Isn't that the whole point of a User group? If SHARE is a lively dynamic
lot ( and it's nearly 30 years since I attended an equivalent, so I have no
idea what the current group is like) then it will be well attended and of
good value to both the users and the vendor. If it isn't, then the ones who
would like to see change will find alternative ways to raise their issues.
CLC is a legitimate outlet for such, but it isn't mutually exclusive;
there's nothing to stop issues being raised in both places. I think Frank's
point was that he'd like to see 64 bit. It seems more like a comment in
passing than a burning issue. I can relate to it because I've felt the same
about a number of things over the years. But if it involves form-filling and
tiresome procedures, it is simply easier to just express an opinion then let
it go. User groups should be places where people can state their opinion and
there can be examination and discussion of it. It is probably better without
paperwork (other than minutes, of course, that will document the gist of
each argument raised.).
Don't write off this newsgroup... (I know it's sometimes very tempting to do
so :-))
Who knows who is lurking here? I have been very surprised in the past at the
private mail I've received and, in one or two cases, actions that were
taken, after discussions here in CLC.
(There is evidence (not from Gartner :-)) to suggest that several thousand
people a w read this group. On one occasion I had 23,000 hits (over a
two w period) to a Web site which published an article I wrote and which
I mentioned here. Several hundred downloaded the associated component that
went with the article. The normal volume to the site where the article was
published would have been around 1500 a w; mentioning it on CLC reached a
much bigger audience...
>
> As far as the Gartner Group stats, that happened to be most recent stats
> I've seen and they were the most convenient to cut/paste.
So, you would have posted them whether they supported your position or not,
right? :-)
> Other studies have produced similar numbers, though. Even if they are off
> slightly, they are still very large numbers.
Slightly? :-)
As they are virtually impossible to verify with any degree of accuracy or
even ball-park credibility, they can be as large as anyone cares to make
them... (within the limits of 64 bit architecture, of course :-))
Pete.
| |
| P. Raulerson 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
| Not so Pete - There are still 10's of thousands of COBOL programmers here in
the U.S., and who knows how many outsourced to India and Russia? It is just
that there quite literally is that COBOL has been around for 40+ years.
There was a time when the vast majority of 'programmers' programmed in
either COBOL or FORTRAN, with everyone else (assembler and assembly mostly,
a little RPG and a dash of more exotic languages like ALGOL) being a not
quite insignificant minority.
In fact, this condition persisted until 'C' and UNIX were popular, and did
not really start declining until the advent of the microcomputer. (BASIC
anyone? Microsoft C & Pascal?) Even on those platforms, COBOL and FORTRAN
were significant, thought not dominating players.
Now, I will grant that those many thousand COBOL programmers today are often
not *exclusively* programming in COBOL. They often use other languages as
well, driven to Java and JSP and AJAX and other technologies.
So Gartner may well be a bit biased, but, they are probably not all that
inaccurate. It would not be unusual to And as far as I know, IBM gave up on
that '30 lines of code per day' a decade ago. In the shops I have ran, our
COBOL people, when writing something new, average a few hundred lines of
code per day, including the necessary database work. When they are doing
maintenance of course, any measure based on lines of code is both
misleading and not at all informative.
At even 200 lines of code per day, which is a smaller measure than I believe
is accurate given today's coding tools, that only requires 25,000 COBOL
programmers to create 5 billion new lines of code per year. (Example, I
wrote a conversion program for a client last w, that has 1,857 lines of
code in it - a trivial exercise - in about four hours. One morning's work.)
-Paul
"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:50sd6tF1h7983U1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "CG" <Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote in message
> news:ec05b$45a83582$d066072d$22651@FUSE.NET...
>
> So where are the jobs? (Gartner is a well biased organization with an
> obvious vested interest in promoting COBOL; I see no problem with
> promoting COBOL, but not when there is a commercial interest to do so, and
> the claims are just rubbish....) The above simply insults the intelligence
> of anyone who is interested in reality.
>
> IBM claim that the average production of debugged working COBOL per day,
> is around 30 lines. If there were half a million COBOL programmers in the
> world, working an average 250 days a year ( and there aren't...not by a
> lomg chalk...) it would take more than 80 years to attain the Gartner
> claim. This is twice as long as the language has existed... even allowing
> for systems that generate COBOL and doubling or tripling the assumed
> number of authors, you will pardon my scepticism :-)
>
> Anyone who takes the trouble to access any of the major job sites will see
> just how "popular" COBOL is. If said person has been doing this for some
> years, there can be no possible doubt as to which way the trend is going.
> In fact, although I was expecting it 10 years ago, it has been steeper
> than I anticipated.
>
> If you rate being employed more than perceived popularity, it might be an
> idea to gain some more skills... And some plain commonsense when looking
> at statistics probably could be handy also...:-)
>
> COBOL might well be the most useful language in the world for programming
> commercial computer systems, but if it doesn't pay the rent, who cares?
>
> Pete.
>
| |
| P. Raulerson 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
| <grating teeth>
There is nothing I hate worse that letting a half edited message loose.
Apologies for all the editing errors in the below post. I really dislike
this Outlook Express thing. Can anyone recommend a better newsreader please?
-Paul
"P. Raulerson" <paul.rl@raulersons.com> wrote in message
news:m09qh.108596$Pv5.18921@newsfe17.lga...
> Not so Pete - There are still 10's of thousands of COBOL programmers here
> in the U.S., and who knows how many outsourced to India and Russia? It is
> just that there quite literally is that COBOL has been around for 40+
> years. There was a time when the vast majority of 'programmers' programmed
> in either COBOL or FORTRAN, with everyone else (assembler and assembly
> mostly, a little RPG and a dash of more exotic languages like ALGOL)
> being a not quite insignificant minority.
>
> In fact, this condition persisted until 'C' and UNIX were popular, and did
> not really start declining until the advent of the microcomputer. (BASIC
> anyone? Microsoft C & Pascal?) Even on those platforms, COBOL and FORTRAN
> were significant, thought not dominating players.
>
> Now, I will grant that those many thousand COBOL programmers today are
> often not *exclusively* programming in COBOL. They often use other
> languages as well, driven to Java and JSP and AJAX and other technologies.
>
> So Gartner may well be a bit biased, but, they are probably not all that
> inaccurate. It would not be unusual to And as far as I know, IBM gave up
> on that '30 lines of code per day' a decade ago. In the shops I have ran,
> our COBOL people, when writing something new, average a few hundred lines
> of code per day, including the necessary database work. When they are
> doing maintenance of course, any measure based on lines of code is both
> misleading and not at all informative.
>
> At even 200 lines of code per day, which is a smaller measure than I
> believe is accurate given today's coding tools, that only requires 25,000
> COBOL programmers to create 5 billion new lines of code per year.
> (Example, I wrote a conversion program for a client last w, that has
> 1,857 lines of code in it - a trivial exercise - in about four hours. One
> morning's work.)
>
> -Paul
>
> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:50sd6tF1h7983U1@mid.individual.net...
>
>
| |
| Rick Smith 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
|
"CG" <Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote in message
news:ec05b$45a83582$d066072d$22651@FUSE.NET...
[snip][color=darkred]
> Do these statistics from Gartner Group [Internet posting in Dec-2006]
> sound like a "...declining popularity of COBOL"...?
>
Legacy code would likely include more than just COBOL.
< http://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulk/publications/FASE99.pdf >
suggests, for 1996(?) and only COBOL, about 192 billion lines
and 30%.
| |
| Alistair 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
|
CG wrote:[color=darkred]
>
> Do these statistics from Gartner Group [Internet posting in Dec-2006]
> sound like a "...declining popularity of COBOL"...?
>
Shouldn't we change "worldwide" into "India"?
| |
| Alistair 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
|
Pete Dashwood wrote:
> IBM claim that the average production of debugged working COBOL per day, is
> around 30 lines.
If we didn't have to test the code we could treble our productivity
overnight.
| |
|
| P. Raulerson wrote:
> <grating teeth>
> There is nothing I hate worse that letting a half edited message loose.
> Apologies for all the editing errors in the below post. I really dislike
> this Outlook Express thing. Can anyone recommend a better newsreader please?
Mozilla Thunderbird - Firefox's cousin. :) I use it for e-mail and
newsgroups both.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ / \ / ~ Live from Montgomery, AL! ~
~ / \/ o ~ ~
~ / /\ - | ~ daniel@thebelowdomain ~
~ _____ / \ | ~ http://www.djs-consulting.com ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ GEEKCODE 3.12 GCS/IT d s-:+ a C++ L++ E--- W++ N++ o? K- w$ ~
~ !O M-- V PS+ PE++ Y? !PGP t+ 5? X+ R* tv b+ DI++ D+ G- e ~
~ h---- r+++ z++++ ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Who is more irrational? A man who believes in a God he doesn't see, or
a man who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?" - Brad Stine
| |
|
| Let me preface this reply by saying - you folks (CLC in general) *did*
get the joke of the original post, right? If not, read it again,
thinking "Star Trek" as you do...
Pete Dashwood wrote:
> Who knows who is lurking here? I have been very surprised in the past at the
> private mail I've received and, in one or two cases, actions that were
> taken, after discussions here in CLC.
>
> (There is evidence (not from Gartner :-)) to suggest that several thousand
> people a w read this group. On one occasion I had 23,000 hits (over a
> two w period) to a Web site which published an article I wrote and which
> I mentioned here. Several hundred downloaded the associated component that
> went with the article. The normal volume to the site where the article was
> published would have been around 1500 a w; mentioning it on CLC reached a
> much bigger audience...
This is true. I've had a link in my sig here for a while, and I get a
lot more hits on my personal site (which is linked off the below site
below) than I would expect. (My webstats show referrers, and I get
several a month from Google Groups.) I also get hits from all over the
globe for the 64-bit Linux media player I host (xine) - in fact, I used
to barely use 100MB a month in bandwidth until I started that; now I
routinely exceed 1GB.
Of course, while people read, they don't talk back - I've had my blog
running with WordPress since late May 2006, and the only comments I've
ever gotten were trackback spam. I guess folks just can't argue with my
keen observations, astounding insights, and astute logic......
Nah, who am I kidding? They're just too lazy to register. ;)
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ / \ / ~ Live from Montgomery, AL! ~
~ / \/ o ~ ~
~ / /\ - | ~ daniel@thebelowdomain ~
~ _____ / \ | ~ http://www.djs-consulting.com ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ GEEKCODE 3.12 GCS/IT d s-:+ a C++ L++ E--- W++ N++ o? K- w$ ~
~ !O M-- V PS+ PE++ Y? !PGP t+ 5? X+ R* tv b+ DI++ D+ G- e ~
~ h---- r+++ z++++ ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Who is more irrational? A man who believes in a God he doesn't see, or
a man who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?" - Brad Stine
| |
| HeyBub 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
| Pete Dashwood wrote:
>
> IBM claim that the average production of debugged working COBOL per
> day, is around 30 lines. If there were half a million COBOL
> programmers in the world, working an average 250 days a year ( and
> there aren't...not by a lomg chalk...) it would take more than 80
> years to attain the Gartner claim. This is twice as long as the
> language has existed... even allowing for systems that generate COBOL
> and doubling or tripling the assumed number of authors, you will
> pardon my scepticism :-)
Thirty lines per day is probably correct for new code. Fortunately, most
applications employ "code re-use." I know one fellow who wrote an air
traffic control system by starting with a functioning payroll package.
Don't fly on payday.
[...]
> COBOL might well be the most useful language in the world for
> programming commercial computer systems, but if it doesn't pay the
> rent, who cares?
All the "open source" people care. Fortunately, there are only about twelve
of them that can make any difference in the world.
| |
| HeyBub 2007-01-13, 6:55 pm |
| P. Raulerson wrote:
> <grating teeth>
> There is nothing I hate worse that letting a half edited message
> loose. Apologies for all the editing errors in the below post. I
> really dislike this Outlook Express thing. Can anyone recommend a
> better newsreader please? -Paul
>
Maybe a couple of add-ons to OE would help. Better would be Outlook (Outlook
uses Outlook Express to handle newsgroups, but, since the hook's invisible,
you might be okay).
For sure you don't want to use anything but a genuine Microsoft product.
Doing so will cause your cat to develop warts.
| |
| Donald Tees 2007-01-13, 9:55 pm |
| LX-i wrote:
> P. Raulerson wrote:
>
> Mozilla Thunderbird - Firefox's cousin. :) I use it for e-mail and
> newsgroups both.
>
> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
>
>
I'm using the same, though under Linux, and with the Canadian English
Dictionary.
Donald
| |
| Donald Tees 2007-01-13, 9:55 pm |
| HeyBub wrote:
> P. Raulerson wrote:
>
> Maybe a couple of add-ons to OE would help. Better would be Outlook (Outlook
> uses Outlook Express to handle newsgroups, but, since the hook's invisible,
> you might be okay).
>
> For sure you don't want to use anything but a genuine Microsoft product.
> Doing so will cause your cat to develop warts.
>
>
It is worse. The cats have taken sides, as evidenced by the shutdown of
one of my computers due to cat fur matting the CPU heat sink and causing
an overheat condition.
I was the Linux machine, too. The XP just kept right on chugging.
Donald
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-14, 7:55 am |
|
"P. Raulerson" <paul.rl@raulersons.com> wrote in message
news:m09qh.108596$Pv5.18921@newsfe17.lga...
> Not so Pete - There are still 10's of thousands of COBOL programmers here
> in the U.S., and who knows how many outsourced to India and Russia? It is
> just that there quite literally is that COBOL has been around for 40+
> years.
Yes, I know... I was that soldier. And for more than 20 years (from 1959)
there weren't more than 200,000 COBOL programmmers world wide. From the
1980s onward new COBOL programmers began to decline, and this accellerated
into the 90s, fuelled by computer science departments actually teaching more
theory and favouring OO languages, and many existing COBOL people retiring,
or dying. It is therefore unlikely that the peak of worldwide COBOL people
(in the West) was ever more than around 250,000. Even if there were a
million of them in China and the sub-continent, all this would do would be
to make it harder for people in the West to get jobs in COBOL, leading to
further decline in properly paid COBOL careers, and fewer people seeing it
as a great career.
This problem will take care of itself as the Global economy starts to bite,
people currently writing COBOL for a pittance will become more affluent and
their expectations will rise, then they will be priced out by the developing
countries who will still do it for less, and so the cycle will repeat until
there is no more need for COBOL. But it will be a dead language in the West,
long before that.
When I embarked on programming as a career in 1965, I saw it as "the coming
thing" and interesting, exciting, and lucrative. It has been all of those
things and I have no regrets about it as a career. I learned COBOL in 1967
and loved it.
(I had two ws to choose between an offer from an advertising agency to
be trained as a copywriter and visualizer, eventually becoming a partner (or
so they told me, but you know what lying SOBs those advertising people
are... :-) ), or to take a job as a junior programmer with the household
name warehouse where I had recently been engaged to sell menswear :-). I
was doing very well at it too... I was honest and fair, found the whole
thing great fun, and the clients liked it. My Boss was horrified when I
creamed the NCR aptitude test and insisted he give me a chance at
programming. He reluctanly agreed when he heard on the grapevine I was
looking at other options if he said "no"...:-)
So, for twenty years, the money came rolling in...after 10 of them I went
freelance and travelled and in 1986, the bubble peaked, then burst. (I
earned more money in 1986 than my father did in his entire life; it was a
sobering thought....) Since then, COBOL has been in decline and I decided to
expand my skill set technically with other languages, and gain new skill
sets in management, negotiation, conflict resolution - yeah, I know it's
hard to believe, but I have the certificate to prove it, and when I post
here, I'm off duty :-)), writing, and IT consultancy. As a result, I can
afford these days to work when I want to, and lie on the beach when I don't.
(I'd be doing a lot more sunbathing if it weren't for an expensive divorce
some years back, but that's another story...) The point is, I can't honestly
recommend anyone to pursue COBOL as a career, starting now. The Glory Days
are gone.
> There was a time when the vast majority of 'programmers' programmed in
> either COBOL or FORTRAN, with everyone else (assembler and assembly
> mostly, a little RPG and a dash of more exotic languages like ALGOL)
> being a not quite insignificant minority.
I try to avoid arguing cases where evidence is, to say the least, ...
questionable.
(Besides, nothing is really achieved; my post was more about getting people
to think than it was about the popularity or otherwise of COBOL.)
If believing Gartner makes people feel better, then I'll agree with P.T.
Barnum ("there's a sucker born every minute"... attributed) and make like
Brer Rabbit...( "Brer Rabbit, he jus' lay low an' sez nothin'..." - Joel
Chandler Harris)
However, if you are serious about this, perhaps you could shed some light on
just WHO is writing these five billion lines of code?
There are a number of currently unemployed COBOL people who would be very
grateful for insight into where exactly their jobs went.
If you say that COBOL is alive and well because a million people are writing
it 18 hours a day for tuppence a w, then I'd need for you to explain how
that has relevance for anyone outside of the Asian sub-continent,
considering a career in it.
Pete.
[I used to program in COBOL... now I can do anything].... this is the tag
line I use when posting to C# forums...:-)
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-14, 7:55 am |
|
"HeyBub" <heybubNOSPAM@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:12qigfbpdjb4mca@news.supernews.com...
> P. Raulerson wrote:
>
> Maybe a couple of add-ons to OE would help. Better would be Outlook
> (Outlook uses Outlook Express to handle newsgroups, but, since the hook's
> invisible, you might be okay).
>
> For sure you don't want to use anything but a genuine Microsoft product.
> Doing so will cause your cat to develop warts.
>
I use full Outlook with the New Zealand English Dictionary (It is MS Word
that edits my messages). I have no complaints with it at all and have used
it for several years now.
Miowever, I haven't had a cat for some time...:-)
Pete
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-14, 7:55 am |
|
"Alistair" <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1168714378.042019.185610@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> Pete Dashwood wrote:
>
> If we didn't have to test the code we could treble our productivity
> overnight.
>
LOL! Although I used this "statistic" to support my argument (the old
"argument form authority" trick - stick a blue label on it and Pow!...
instant credibility :-), like Paul, I am sceptical of it.
I worked for IBM on several occasions (the rest of the time I just took
their money...:-)) and found that things like Function Point Analysis (I
think you mentioned this recently Alistair) are ingrained in their
collective subconscious. I never once saw an accurate project schedule,
based on this technique. I got in trouble on one occasion because I scrapped
the official FPA based estimate, and used my own for a project plan. It came
in exactly when I said it would, but that made little difference; I hadn't
followed procedure and a reprimand ensued. Then I noticed one of the IBM
team working on the FPA analysis. I asked her what she was doing (the
project had finished) and she said: "COI (thanks, Doc... very apposite)
wanted it adjusted to match your estimates so it can be filed with the other
project information".
Pete.
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-14, 7:55 am |
|
"HeyBub" <heybubNOSPAM@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:12qiga3stm5e1b7@news.supernews.com...
> Pete Dashwood wrote:
>
> Thirty lines per day is probably correct for new code. Fortunately, most
> applications employ "code re-use." I know one fellow who wrote an air
> traffic control system by starting with a functioning payroll package.
>
> Don't fly on payday.
>
ROFL!
Maybe if you cash your cheque at the airport, the system clears it
quicker... :-)
Maybe if nobody cashes their cheques, the congestion over O'Hare and Dallas
disappears altogether... :-)
Maybe there are subtle universal rules at work here... like, the number of
days your cheque takes to clear is the same as the number of hours you took
to get to the airport.
You could be on to something very significant here, Jerry. Suppose the
concept were extended...
Imagine...
A NORAD defense system cloned off Accounts Receivable....
" So that incoming cloud, is that everything they owe us...? Don't respond
until we've checked the balance..."
A telecom system cloned from the Windows OS...
"Yes, Mr. Jones, your conversation can be heard by all 200,000,000
subscribers to our network. What you say goes around to everybody and only
the person you actually want to talk to will respond."
" I don't know why it works like that... something about saving money on
computer systems, I think. I'm sorry the house burned down. I guess the
firemen in Nicaragua got the message before the ones in town. Still, that
Lechon A o they did in the ashes of the house was pretty delicious..."
> [...]
>
>
> All the "open source" people care. Fortunately, there are only about
> twelve of them that can make any difference in the world.
>
I don't know of any open source applications (apart from some hobby COBOL
compilers) that are being written in COBOL...
Pete.
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-14, 7:55 am |
|
"Alistair" <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1168713338.129278.254770@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> CG wrote:
>
> Shouldn't we change "worldwide" into "India"?
>
LOL!
I think the indians are doing that for us :-)
Hence the "cowboys" one finds in the West... :-)
Pete.
| |
| Rick Smith 2007-01-14, 6:55 pm |
|
"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:50sd6tF1h7983U1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "CG" <Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote in message
> news:ec05b$45a83582$d066072d$22651@FUSE.NET...
>
> So where are the jobs? (Gartner is a well biased organization with an
> obvious vested interest in promoting COBOL; I see no problem with
promoting
> COBOL, but not when there is a commercial interest to do so, and the
claims
> are just rubbish....) The above simply insults the intelligence of anyone
> who is interested in reality.
>
> IBM claim that the average production of debugged working COBOL per day,
is
> around 30 lines. If there were half a million COBOL programmers in the
> world, working an average 250 days a year ( and there aren't...not by a
lomg
> chalk...) it would take more than 80 years to attain the Gartner claim.
This
> is twice as long as the language has existed... even allowing for systems
> that generate COBOL and doubling or tripling the assumed number of
authors,
> you will pardon my scepticism :-)
I wonder, Mr Dashwood, are you using UK billions
(a million millions) or US billions (a thousand millions)?
[My dictionary says there is a difference.]
| |
| P. Raulerson 2007-01-14, 6:55 pm |
| Not entirely sure we are talking about the same thing Pete. *I* program in
COBOL (freelance) and I think I make more than a 'tuppence' - could tell you
for sure if I had any idea what one of them there critters were. ;)
The point was that even though I make money off COBOL, it is not my only
avenue. In my day job, I use Assembler, C, Java, Visual Basic, Perl, ASP,
JSP, SQL, and a few other technologies. In my consulting biz, I use COBOL,
RPG, Java, Ada, Pascal, CMS-2Q(!), Jovial, and a few other exotic languages,
as well as a few different assembly languages. (Heck, I modified some PDP-11
Macro Assembler the other w - and I was not even aware that a PDP-11 was
still *running* anywhere! :)
The same is true for what used to be 'COBOL Only' shops - as new
technologies and needs emerge, the 'only' part drops away. But the need for
plain old fashioned 3GL programming is not likely to go away for a long
time, if ever, because it is *cheaper* to do than say, Windows based GUI
processing. When and if it becomes less expensive to write tree killer
reports in something else, that will be when 3GL's fade to non-existence.
Yours,
-Paul
"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:50ug6nF1i0s8iU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "P. Raulerson" <paul.rl@raulersons.com> wrote in message
> news:m09qh.108596$Pv5.18921@newsfe17.lga...
>
> Yes, I know... I was that soldier. And for more than 20 years (from 1959)
> there weren't more than 200,000 COBOL programmmers world wide. From the
> 1980s onward new COBOL programmers began to decline, and this
> accellerated into the 90s, fuelled by computer science departments
> actually teaching more theory and favouring OO languages, and many
> existing COBOL people retiring, or dying. It is therefore unlikely that
> the peak of worldwide COBOL people (in the West) was ever more than around
> 250,000. Even if there were a million of them in China and the
> sub-continent, all this would do would be to make it harder for people in
> the West to get jobs in COBOL, leading to further decline in properly paid
> COBOL careers, and fewer people seeing it as a great career.
>
> This problem will take care of itself as the Global economy starts to
> bite, people currently writing COBOL for a pittance will become more
> affluent and their expectations will rise, then they will be priced out by
> the developing countries who will still do it for less, and so the cycle
> will repeat until there is no more need for COBOL. But it will be a dead
> language in the West, long before that.
>
> When I embarked on programming as a career in 1965, I saw it as "the
> coming thing" and interesting, exciting, and lucrative. It has been all of
> those things and I have no regrets about it as a career. I learned COBOL
> in 1967 and loved it.
>
> (I had two ws to choose between an offer from an advertising agency to
> be trained as a copywriter and visualizer, eventually becoming a partner
> (or so they told me, but you know what lying SOBs those advertising people
> are... :-) ), or to take a job as a junior programmer with the household
> name warehouse where I had recently been engaged to sell menswear :-). I
> was doing very well at it too... I was honest and fair, found the whole
> thing great fun, and the clients liked it. My Boss was horrified when I
> creamed the NCR aptitude test and insisted he give me a chance at
> programming. He reluctanly agreed when he heard on the grapevine I was
> looking at other options if he said "no"...:-)
>
> So, for twenty years, the money came rolling in...after 10 of them I went
> freelance and travelled and in 1986, the bubble peaked, then burst. (I
> earned more money in 1986 than my father did in his entire life; it was a
> sobering thought....) Since then, COBOL has been in decline and I decided
> to expand my skill set technically with other languages, and gain new
> skill sets in management, negotiation, conflict resolution - yeah, I know
> it's hard to believe, but I have the certificate to prove it, and when I
> post here, I'm off duty :-)), writing, and IT consultancy. As a result, I
> can afford these days to work when I want to, and lie on the beach when I
> don't. (I'd be doing a lot more sunbathing if it weren't for an expensive
> divorce some years back, but that's another story...) The point is, I
> can't honestly recommend anyone to pursue COBOL as a career, starting now.
> The Glory Days are gone.
>
>
> I try to avoid arguing cases where evidence is, to say the least, ...
> questionable.
>
> (Besides, nothing is really achieved; my post was more about getting
> people to think than it was about the popularity or otherwise of COBOL.)
>
> If believing Gartner makes people feel better, then I'll agree with P.T.
> Barnum ("there's a sucker born every minute"... attributed) and make like
> Brer Rabbit...( "Brer Rabbit, he jus' lay low an' sez nothin'..." - Joel
> Chandler Harris)
>
> However, if you are serious about this, perhaps you could shed some light
> on just WHO is writing these five billion lines of code?
>
> There are a number of currently unemployed COBOL people who would be very
> grateful for insight into where exactly their jobs went.
>
> If you say that COBOL is alive and well because a million people are
> writing it 18 hours a day for tuppence a w, then I'd need for you to
> explain how that has relevance for anyone outside of the Asian
> sub-continent, considering a career in it.
>
> Pete.
>
> [I used to program in COBOL... now I can do anything].... this is the tag
> line I use when posting to C# forums...:-)
>
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-14, 6:55 pm |
| Yes, I am aware of the difference, having had it explained to me that
Americans "think small" when I was very young... :-)
I was using US billions (310,000,000,000 lines of code was the claim). I
can't think of any practical use for the UK billion and I think the American
one is generally accepted in most places these days.
Pete.
"Rick Smith" <ricksmith@mfi.net> wrote in message
news:12qkuiiijf0o11f@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:50sd6tF1h7983U1@mid.individual.net...
> promoting
> claims
> is
> lomg
> This
> authors,
>
> I wonder, Mr Dashwood, are you using UK billions
> (a million millions) or US billions (a thousand millions)?
> [My dictionary says there is a difference.]
>
>
>
| |
| Rick Smith 2007-01-14, 9:55 pm |
|
"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:50vpr3F1hvrseU1@mid.individual.net...
> Yes, I am aware of the difference, having had it explained to me that
> Americans "think small" when I was very young... :-)
>
> I was using US billions (310,000,000,000 lines of code was the claim). I
> can't think of any practical use for the UK billion and I think the
American
> one is generally accepted in most places these days.
>
> Pete.
Ok! I just had to ask, because I don't understand
your scepticism.
Let us reduce the 310 billion lines of legacy code to
less than 200 billion lines of COBOL.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in two
categories, reports, for 2005, about 700,000
programmers. If approximately 30% are full-time
equivalent COBOL programmers, there are about
210,000 COBOL programmers in the US. The
number outside the US should be greater, say
290,000 to make it an even 500,000 (though the
total may be higher, I just don't know). [Other BLS
categories would involve some programming, so the
total for the US could be close to 1,000,000 with
significant programming activities. The report at
< http://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulk/publications/FASE99.pdf >
estimated some 10,000,000 worldwide for 2000. It is
possible the total number of COBOL programmers
worldwide is closer to 1,000,000 than the 500,000
assumed.]
At 10,000 lines per year (40 per day) of new code
times 500,000 is 5 billion lines of new code; this suggests
the second claim may not be unreasonable.
Add a liberal amount of program cloning and some
decommissioning, and I have no problem with a
figure of 200 billion lines of COBOL.
[color=darkred]
> "Rick Smith" <ricksmith@mfi.net> wrote in message
> news:12qkuiiijf0o11f@corp.supernews.com...
the[color=darkred]
[snip][color=darkred]
anyone[color=darkred]
day,[color=darkred]
systems[color=darkred]
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-15, 3:55 am |
| X-Trace: individual.net j2Q+O2j6vUTd2mn4tx4EeAa8yKdKAP7cy+faUktk
DIAdFCJy+r
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3028
X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3028
Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.cobol:162779
"Rick Smith" <ricksmith@mfi.net> wrote in message
news:12qlsu9ge2b8921@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:50vpr3F1hvrseU1@mid.individual.net...
> American
>
> Ok! I just had to ask, because I don't understand
> your scepticism.
>
> Let us reduce the 310 billion lines of legacy code to
> less than 200 billion lines of COBOL.
>
> The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in two
> categories, reports, for 2005, about 700,000
> programmers. If approximately 30% are full-time
> equivalent COBOL programmers, there are about
> 210,000 COBOL programmers in the US. The
> number outside the US should be greater, say
> 290,000 to make it an even 500,000 (though the
> total may be higher, I just don't know). [Other BLS
> categories would involve some programming, so the
> total for the US could be close to 1,000,000 with
> significant programming activities. The report at
> < http://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulk/publications/FASE99.pdf >
> estimated some 10,000,000 worldwide for 2000. It is
> possible the total number of COBOL programmers
> worldwide is closer to 1,000,000 than the 500,000
> assumed.]
OK, at least you have done some homework. There are still some important
intangibles in there (like, IF 30% of the world's programmers are writing
COBOL, and OTHER BLS categories being larger than the COBOL
category,...which I seriously doubt) but I'll go with your argument for
now...
>
> At 10,000 lines per year (40 per day) of new code
> times 500,000 is 5 billion lines of new code; this suggests
> the second claim may not be unreasonable.
>
All right. (Given the above assumptions, which are certainly less unlikely
than the original ones)
> Add a liberal amount of program cloning and some
> decommissioning, and I have no problem with a
> figure of 200 billion lines of COBOL.
>
Sure, and it is 66% of the original figure being triumphantly touted by
Gartner.
If 5 billion lines are being written every year, where are the jobs?
If they're not in places where you and I can get them, then I'm sorry, but
there is no interest in it for me, and I can't in all honestly encourage
youngsters to go into COBOL programming as a lucrative and secure career. I
did this up until about 1995, around which time it was becoming painfully
apparent from sites like Jobserve that the work was simply drying up. That
was about the time I realised there were going to be a large number of
people out of work unless they acquired new skills, and it was also the time
I stopped recommending strategic COBOL solutions as part of my consultancy
brief. COBOL alone was no longer enough. It gives me no pleasure at all to
have been right about this.
(I had hoped there would be a huge uptake of OO COBOL which would have put
COBOL on a similar basis as the other emerging languages and give it a new
lease of life that should have been good for several decades, with any luck.
It was a forlorn hope...:-))
Thanks for providing some more credible input to the debate, but, at least
as far as I'm concerned, the case is still not made.
Pete.
>
> the
> [snip]
> anyone
> day,
> systems
>
>
>
| |
| Rick Smith 2007-01-15, 6:55 pm |
|
"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
news:510nreF1gk3qoU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "Rick Smith" <ricksmith@mfi.net> wrote in message
> news:12qlsu9ge2b8921@corp.supernews.com...
I[color=darkred]
>
> OK, at least you have done some homework. There are still some important
> intangibles in there (like, IF 30% of the world's programmers are writing
> COBOL, and OTHER BLS categories being larger than the COBOL
> category,...which I seriously doubt) but I'll go with your argument for
> now...
I never claimed that "30% of the world's programmers
are writing COBOL". I used that as a starting point for
determining the reasonableness of the claim of "Five
billion lines of new COBOL code are being written
every year." I then used other figures to reduce the ratio
to nearer 10%, though I still have no way of knowing
how close that number is.
BLS does not catagorize programmers by language;
but one group not included was systems programmers.
>
> All right. (Given the above assumptions, which are certainly less unlikely
> than the original ones)
>
>
> Sure, and it is 66% of the original figure being triumphantly touted by
> Gartner.
The original 310 billion was "legacy code". I reduced it,
using another source, to 200 billion lines for COBOL only.
[snip]
> Thanks for providing some more credible input to the debate, but, at least
> as far as I'm concerned, the case is still not made.
It depends on the case to ne made, does it not?
The intial statement mentioned "the declining popularity
of Cobol" to which certain information was given, perhaps,
to refute that claim. If that information is rejected as
unreasonable, then further reaoning is worthless. If the
information is accepted as reasonable (see above), then
it is possible to reason about its meaning.
Given that the total number of lines of COBOL is about
forty years worth of programming (at the curent rate), there
must have been a time in the past when code was being
added at rates exceeding 5 billion lines per year. A
decline in the rate of production supports one notion of
"the declining popularity of Cobol".
Given that the number of progammers has increased
dramatically over the past forty years and the code
production rates for COBOL have declined, then there
must have been a point where COBOL programmers
represented a larger percentage of programmers than
today. A decline in the percentage of COBOL programmers
supports another notion of "the declining popularity of Cobol".
By this analysis, the information from Gartner does not
refute the claim of "the declining popularity of Cobol";
but may be seen to support the claim.
name[color=darkred]
of[color=darkred]
reports:[color=darkred]
world[color=darkred]
year.[color=darkred]
an[color=darkred]
the[color=darkred]
by[color=darkred]
>
>
| |
| Pete Dashwood 2007-01-15, 6:55 pm |
|
"Rick Smith" <ricksmith@mfi.net> wrote in message
news:12qngs5bgflhl20@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:510nreF1gk3qoU1@mid.individual.net...
> I
>
> I never claimed that "30% of the world's programmers
> are writing COBOL".
Yes, on re-reading I see it was 30% of the programmers in the US. Sorry.
(I still seriously doubt that, but neither of us can support our positions)
>I used that as a starting point for
> determining the reasonableness of the claim of "Five
> billion lines of new COBOL code are being written
> every year." I then used other figures to reduce the ratio
> to nearer 10%, though I still have no way of knowing
> how close that number is.
>
> BLS does not catagorize programmers by language;
> but one group not included was systems programmers.
>
>
> The original 310 billion was "legacy code". I reduced it,
> using another source, to 200 billion lines for COBOL only.
>
Ask Gartner what they mean by "legacy code". It is COBOL.
> [snip]
>
>
> It depends on the case to ne made, does it not?
>
Absolutely.
> The intial statement mentioned "the declining popularity
> of Cobol" to which certain information was given, perhaps,
> to refute that claim. If that information is rejected as
> unreasonable, then further reaoning is worthless. If the
> information is accepted as reasonable (see above), then
> it is possible to reason about its meaning.
I take the former position. I am not persuaded by your attempts to
"reasonablize" the argument, so the best I can do is agree to differ :-)
(I would note, in passing, that a much more important side issue of this is
whether people should just accept "statistics", (maybe because those
statistics appear to match what they hope for), or should actually apply
some credibility and reasonability checks before propagating their
conclusions. In other words, it is important to think about claims before
deciding they are true (or otherwise)...)
>
> Given that the total number of lines of COBOL is about
> forty years worth of programming (at the curent rate), there
> must have been a time in the past when code was being
> added at rates exceeding 5 billion lines per year. A
> decline in the rate of production supports one notion of
> "the declining popularity of Cobol".
>
> Given that the number of progammers has increased
> dramatically over the past forty years and the code
> production rates for COBOL have declined, then there
> must have been a point where COBOL programmers
> represented a larger percentage of programmers than
> today.
There certainly was; that is not debatable. (It is axiomatic to people like
myself who lived through that time).
> A decline in the percentage of COBOL programmers
> supports another notion of "the declining popularity of Cobol".
>
> By this analysis, the information from Gartner does not
> refute the claim of "the declining popularity of Cobol";
> but may be seen to support the claim.
I take your point, but I don't think that was their intention.
I can't correspond further on this, Rick, (please don't take it personally;
it isn't...)
I DO appreciate your reasoned input (whether I agree or not :-)) and, as
always, value your posts.
Pete.
>
>
> name
> of
> reports:
> world
> year.
> an
> the
> by
>
>
| |
| Howard Brazee 2007-01-16, 6:55 pm |
| On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:24:59 -0500, CG
<Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote:
>I don't know exactly what you mean by IBM position on adding 64-bit to
>COBOL. Since you have not been to SHARE recently, possibly you have not
>heard directly from IBM and are relying on hearsay. Their clear
>statement has been, "Show me exactly what functions you cannot do
>without the COBOL application having direct addressability to 64-bit
>storage."
The major function is: Have the salesman say "yes", we have 64-bit
CoBOL.
And don't think this isn't an important function.
| |
| Alistair 2007-01-17, 6:55 pm |
|
Pete Dashwood wrote:
> I use full Outlook with the New Zealand English Dictionary (It is MS Word
> that edits my messages). I have no complaints with it at all and have used
> it for several years now.
What difference is there compared to UK English?
>
> Miowever, I haven't had a cat for some time...:-)
>
You should try one. They taste just like chicken. Make sure they are
well cooked...to kill off the parasites.
| |
| Alistair 2007-01-17, 6:55 pm |
|
Pete Dashwood wrote:
> "Alistair" <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:1168714378.042019.185610@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> LOL! Although I used this "statistic" to support my argument (the old
> "argument form authority" trick - stick a blue label on it and Pow!...
> instant credibility :-), like Paul, I am sceptical of it.
>
> I worked for IBM on several occasions (the rest of the time I just took
> their money...:-)) and found that things like Function Point Analysis (I
> think you mentioned this recently Alistair) are ingrained in their
> collective subconscious. I never once saw an accurate project schedule,
> based on this technique. I got in trouble on one occasion because I scrapped
> the official FPA based estimate, and used my own for a project plan. It came
> in exactly when I said it would, but that made little difference; I hadn't
> followed procedure and a reprimand ensued. Then I noticed one of the IBM
> team working on the FPA analysis. I asked her what she was doing (the
> project had finished) and she said: "COI (thanks, Doc... very apposite)
> wanted it adjusted to match your estimates so it can be filed with the other
> project information".
>
> Pete.
My one brush with FPA showed that it could assess the complexity of a
system quite accurately - after developing the system. The FPA count
would have been much lower if we had worked out the FPA from the design
document. IIRC, FPA works on assessing inputs and outputs and does
precious little with the twists and turns that a system takes, so a lot
of the complexity is brushed over.
| |
| gary drummond 2007-01-25, 6:55 pm |
| Howard Brazee wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:24:59 -0500, CG
> <Carl.Gehr.ButNoSPAMStuff@MCGCG.Com> wrote:
>
>
> The major function is: Have the salesman say "yes", we have 64-bit
> CoBOL.
>
> And don't think this isn't an important function.
I agree Howard. Being able to meet the marketing bullets of competitors
means as much, if not more, as being able to do the job.
I started on a mainframe with 1MB, which evolved to 67MB of addressing,
with "virtual" addressing (1100/2200 Multibanking). This capability did
make the customer "feel good" about not having to worry about exceeding
the capabilities of his system, and eventually the software, including
COBOL, "could" take advantage of it. Nothing I ever saw or heard about
ever used even a significant amount of that range.
As things progressed toward transaction processing, large programs and
data were broken into smaller programs/data, and databases were used to
provide concurrent access/update. Larger programs were limited to batch,
with more memory being used by the common (shared) database routines and
common (shared) data. Program sizes actually decreased during that time.
COBOL files and interactive/batch programs are still used. This of
course applies only to in-house real work, not to the applications seen
by the general public on the Internet. There are exceptions such as
Flexus SP2 as mentioned by John Merhottin in a 2001 posting, and a few
things I, and I'm sure others have developed, to provide some type of
"Thin Client" interface.
The only problem I ever ran into where 64bit addressing "was" required
is when the customer needed it to implement a graphics program-after the
OS's 2GB file size limit was fixed. "Paging" of parts of the images in
memory was NOT an option, BOTH images had to be present in virtual
memory for comparing or overlays on the dual monitors. (This was NOT a
COBOL application!)
The current buzz to have 64 bit addressing is because of the monolithic
programs being developed today. VMWARE and other virtualization
environments host multiple OS environments, and are limited by
addressing sizes, so 64 bits would be a requirement. ZFS has been added
to Solaris, not just because UFS has limits other than sizes, but
because the disk storage must be capable of storing multiple virtual
memory areas.
Windows, and applications for it, have blurred the distinction between
the session, presentation, and application layers, to the point that an
extremely large memory footprint is required just to load, much less
execute. To some extent, this "requirement" has also migrated to the
Unix environment. Programs tend to grow so large that they must be
broken into a server and application machine. Perhaps if the server were
left on the mainframe, the applications could just be developed for the
workstations.
Gary
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