C'mon you old Farts If you know COBOL You're Essential!

originally posted by: murphy22
Science at its best!
I'm sure even "farts" that could use "COBOL", couldn't sharpen a knife or bait a hook to feed themselves, without "COBAL". F'n educated idiots.
God forbid, "public servants", would actually have to strain themselves with pen and paper.

I'd rather be a f'n educated idiot, than an f'n Uneducated idiot.

You also assume incorrectly. Oddly enough people i've met that know COBAL are usually well rounded folks that have knowledge in a lot of things, including survival.

originally posted by: charlyv
Understand that these COBOL applications, and their operating systems are completely virtualized, to get rid of slow hardware. Most run under VMWare on Linux and the original systems have no idea that they are not running in their native environment.

Knowing .. say VMS and COBOL, are required to understand how to compile and link Humpty Dumpty back together again, but we do not have to write our modifications in COBOL. Instead, we will use a cross-language interpreter, and we can write in C, C++ and have it generate a COBOL source which then gets natively compiled in the virtual machine using the original systems build tools.

If you get that, then you understand the tasks at hand.

One can (and some do) follow the same approach to alter the operation of say a Python program: you can write shared objects in C that execute code via a Python interpreter. Or...you can affect the changes you wish to make by editing the .py source files in question, invoke it using /bin/python and save yourself the headache.

Then again, if you're a sado-masochist, can't get tty in the guest, or getting paid by the hour, you could x-compile COBOL source.

originally posted by: SleeperHasAwakened
A coworker enlightened me with this masterful project this afternoon...

github.com...

My previous employer took COBOL based programs and used a utility (not sure the details) and “auto” converted the apps to Java. They then gave the code a new name “CobJav” because it wasn’t quite like native Java or COBOL.

a reply to: JAGStorm

As you should be. I wouldn't expect otherwise. An educated idiot only does what they're "trained/educated" to do. Like an "educated" monkey.

I never assume incorrectly. I'm not a "scientist", I don't base my facts, on assumption. Only on facts.

You speak of "COBOL" as if it was a necessary "knowledge" or "education"?
Apparently it is not, they're looking for old monkeys with that "education".
So? Apparently, the new "education" is outdated? Or an "education/trained" in "COBOL"? Which is it?

I've seen a lot of educated idiots that can't sharpen a knife or "survive" without an iPhone.

a reply to: TheBoomersRBusted

It was a while back. I'm sure she's retired by now. Maybe even dead, I dunno. It reminds me of a saying we had back then: Those who can't code teach code. Those who can't teach - well, they teach at the northeast campus. Turns out it was true.

originally posted by: underpass61
How about FORTRAN people?

Yes, LOL, I learned FORTRAN and COBOL decades ago when I was in college. I actually liked them...