[Coco] And another question

[Mark McDougall]

On 14/05/2013 9:52 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> RM-COBOL.  Ryan-McFarland.  Their compiler ran on most micros and
> a number of Minis.  Eventually bought out by Micro-Focus, I believe.

Interesting! After graduating (late 80's) I ended up working for the 
actuarial department of an insurance company for a few years doing PC-based 
development in C. Inevitably they concluded that the company really needed a 
proper IT department and so there was a big upheaval (for us) when they 
hired an IT head to form a new group to service the entire company comprised 
of mainframe programmers and the then-actuarial PC group.

Not surprisingly they hired consultants at great expense to come in and tell 
us what our application development framework should be. And after talking 
at length with the mainframe programmers (aka 'real programmers') the report 
concluded that the way forward was for all PC development to switch to 
screen-scraping via 3270 terminal emulators in Micro-Focus COBOL on OS/2.

Of course by then (early 90's) we in the PC group were looking towards SQL 
and even C++, so to say we were dismayed is an understatement. By this time 
I was actually studying again (engineering) and had been looking to jump 
ship for several months now, so I was more bemused than concerned.

I ended up leaving not long after, but common sense finally prevailed and 
the consultant's report was largely ignored, much to the chagrin of the 
mainframe developers. It was quite a depressing place to work in the end - 
from an elevated open-plan office with rather nice area views, to a dingy 
rabbit-warren of high-walled cubicles a few floors down.

But the mere utterance of "Micro-Focus COBOL" brings it all back to me after 
all these years!

> I once did a project using RT-11 and COBOL on
> a Terak with 4 floopies (the norm was one and at most two.  people
> marveled at the tower on my desk!!)  Now those were the fun days.

Yup, these young whipper-snappers will never get to experience the 'fun' we did!

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"