God bless those who are old enough to have used discontinued technology from many decades ago.
An old system-36 developer, told me how great the system-36 was in it's time. This was last Century, 20th, of course, when the AS/400 & OS/400 was still supported and not yet discontinued.
He told me how "Great" the "COMP" & "BITOF/BITON" operation code were. And how left-hand indicators are AWESOME. Of course he had to brag about the RPG-CYCLE. Which we were NOT allowed to use in ANY DEVELOPMENT, as per Corporate Standards. I said really? This was 1991, and we had OS/400, and not a system-32, 34, 36 or 38.
Except for my first job on the IBM, I was told directly not to use the Cycle, EVER! It was too limiting. At my first job, I used the ancient RPG cycle.
So you are telling me about technology that we are NOT using at this company. That is worthless. Why not tell me how you can speak Mandarin Chinese or something. Great that you are that "SMART", but worthless to computer systems we are using in 1991.
He NEVER bragged to me about the Old discontinued equipment again.
And my mentor told me to never to get stuck on old technology, or you will limit your IBM Career. I never forgot that lesson!!! Ran into too many system-36, who could NOT, or rather would NOT move forward to more modern technology!
I ran into an old COBOL Developer, who would Not use the INFDS, which would tell us what line number or the Overflow indicators for printed reports. He wanted to manually Count the printer lines, so he would NOT forget to count lines! OUCH! He left, and I convert to Over-flow indicator. And my boss was amazed that I did the update so fast. <LOL>
Yes, people are still running old Trash-80, Amiga, Sinclair, dos 3.0/4.0, Windows 3.1/xp., system-32,34,36, 400 etc...
I guess some people cannot let old technology go... It is their first love, and will not let it go.
Welcome to the 21st Century using IBM i! Which is also coming up on decade old. Still supported, and not discontinued yet... <Hint Hint>
I constantly have to tell fellow developers that you cannot load windows 10 on a last century Laptop, like 8088, 286, etc. Just like you cannot load powerful OS/IBM i on Last Century IBM hardware:
system 32, 34, 36, 400. NOT POSSIBLE! It will not load PERIOD. They love their Model-T, buggy-whips, and outhouses.
Hat off to the Old-timers who suffered through old punch-card technology. Thank God, I did not have to use punch cards/Paper-Tape, pull-wire circuit-boards like petty-coat Junction! Way before my time! <Joy Joy>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchboard_operator
PS. At college I study COBOL/Assembler, but never used them in the real world. Except to convert a single 4-page COBOL program to RPG/400.
I prefer to keep it simple, and use a powerful I.D.E. like RDI 9.6, which helps me. And I do NOT have worry about dropping a deck of cards. <LOL> Color syntax, code-assist, outline view, more lines of code. Double-click to find and fix errors. I say GOOD-BYE to 50+ year old technology!
<Big Smile>
-Ken Killian-
-----Original Message-----
From: WDSCI-L [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Hawkins
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2017 8:16 AM
To: wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] RDi Birthday Celebration
I think it was 1983 or very close to it, I was taking a COBOL class to enrich my background and we were required to write one program on punch cards "for the experience" of using punch cards. While I recall registering for classes with punch cards (we were given our own unique card, then going to tables of each department to get a punch card for the section we wanted to register for, I don't recall to many other occasions of using punch cards. I am still amazed at the technology that allowed punch cards to work.
I do recall taking a course in RPG II (boy were those the days) and going through a whole lot of coding sheets. Took a test we had to write an entire program on the coding sheets and turn it in that way. I was surprised when I talked to an actual RPG programmer who told me they didn't use coding sheets.
Punch cards, coding sheets, SEU, RDI--a journey through history. I know some of you have coded before we even had punch cards. I do have to wonder what is next.
--
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