NEXT HALL OF FAMER - BILL SELF
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Here is a scary thought. COBOL reputedly runs over 70 percent of the apps on the Internet and they are having trouble training programmers to replace the old ones leaving the field or retiring. Imagine a world where everyone that knows how to program COBOL IS DEAD and hackers unleash a virus to randomly reverse or delete a line of COBOL code from routines now on the net. Revelations was apparently foreshadowing our geek-centric world. Here is a fun, DEADPAN slide show on COBOL http://mobile.eweek.com/developer/slideshows/cobol-10-reasons-the-old-language-is-still-kicking
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@jaybate-1.0 Until now, I was not aware that it was even legal to use “fun” and “COBOL” in the same sentence!
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@jaybate-1.0 It runs “over 70% of business transactions”, not 70% of apps in the Internet - at least says the article you mention.
If everyone who knows COBOL dies, how will the hackers know how to hack COBOL code? They will be dead…
And you know as well as I do that the COBOL source code is not out there, just the compiled and linked routines that would have to be hacked binarily.
Why, oh why did I ever mention COBOL???
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“Why, oh why did I ever mention COBOL???”
I was thinking that question, too. Reminds me of my “computer days” at university… hanging around the IBM mainframe room at night instead of going out on the town with my friends.
The university had to give me my own secured storage space for all my reader card scripts. Boxes and boxes… and more boxes.
My first storage space was in another building… had my own 2-wheeler to take the boxes over to run my scripts and one time got nailed in a rain storm. Didn’t think I had an issue, perhaps it was just the humidity… but my cards jammed the machine and I then had to store them in a dehumidified room. One petition later I had my storage space moved into the same building as the mainframe. Hooray!
Those were the days… I was never so excited as when we received our first CRT screens! There was an overwhelming demand for use of those screens. You had to reserve your seat time and you couldn’t tie up a CRT for more than a few hours.
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COBOL is still used as a legacy programming mostly in the banking world and as such it still runs a large number of “transactions,” 70% according to the article, but it is over two years old and COBOL is being replaced and I seriously doubt that number is still correct. COBOL has no presence in the Internet as it was not designed as a languages for real time applications but more for a transaction/batch operating environment suited for mainframes which are being quickly replaced by smaller and much more efficient servers. Most of the code is old code that is being maintained and I seriously doubt any new substantial application has been developed in the the last 20 years.
Depending on whether you want client-side or server side scripting, the more widely used programming languages for Internet applications are PHP, Java, Python and Ruby; between the they probably run 99% of internet applications.
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You are correct, COBOL has no presence in the Internet, it just was not designed for that. I would say that the 70% even two years ago is greatly exaggerated and I would guess the number is much lower than that since every time a large organization moves away from mainframe into servers, the COBOL applications are migrated to a new system. and the use of mainframes is decreasing fast.
COBOL would be really easy to hack since it is not compiled and the code is open and pretty readable even by someone with little computer knowledge, this is why it is hidden within mainframes with little communication to the outside world. and it could not survive in the Internet.
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@jaybate-1.0 WORD
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@jaybate-1.0 I also think Jay Wright is an idiot much like “Dubya” And, you do have a point. Why does the BHOF even have a selection process? Lets just let every single coach in who has x amount of years in, regardless of defining characteristics and stats
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@JayHawkFanToo said:
COBOL would be really easy to hack since it is not compiled and the code is open and pretty readable even by someone with little computer knowledge, this is why it is hidden within mainframes with little communication to the outside world.
What are you talking about? COBOL has always been compiled and linked, and only the executables go to production.
In my company, the same mainframe transactions are called from within and from Internet applications.
Someone please tell me if Cheick has been cleared to play !!!
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Howling!!!
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Me not understand.
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NNNNNEEEEERRRRRRRDDDDDSSSSSSS!!!
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I should have specified that COBOL 2014 is the first version to have a somewhat compliant compiler, the previous official version COBOL 2002 had compilers that targeted only the .NET framework. Most application are running the much older versions of COBOL and not the mos recent.
I did some COBOL programming back in the early 80’s using the State of Kansas IBM 3033 Mainframe and quickly abandoned that environment and switched to UNIX based mini/micro systems. Coming from a FORTRAN background the code seemed easy to read but the lack of structure made it very difficult to follow the logic. I directed the procurement and managed the first UNIX super-micro computer for the State of Kansas; The Kansas DOT still uses some of the C programs I wrote 30 years ago.I don’t believe there have any COBOL programs left. .Night and day difference. between the Mainframe/COBOL and the new micro/structured languages environments.
My brother in law was just telling me of a small utility in Maryland that uses a Commodore 64 computer to run some controls and will not replace it because they do not know how to do it and the computer has run flawlessly for well over 30 years; they have a few backups they bought on EBay. Some things will never get fully upgraded/replaced. COBOL is probably in that camp.
…and, I have not heard anything about Cheik…:(
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@ParisHawk Cheick has been cleared to play.
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@Lulufulu for real? Start a new thread!
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@Crimsonorblue22 I was totally kidding
I mean, well he did ask someone to tell him Cheick had been cleared. I was just obliging @ParisHawk
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@Lulufulu said:
@ParisHawk Cheick has been cleared to play.
Either you’re kidding - and you should say so,
Or you’re not kidding - and you should back up what you’re saying with a link.
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@Lulufulu Were you at the bank? Asking if the check had been cleared to pay?
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Back to hoops computer nerds!
That list of coaches to someday make the hall had some strange names or criteria. It seemed like making a FF would get you in or even getting close like Sean Millers 4 elite 8’s. But Steve Fishers ring and two other championship games doesn’t get him in?
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@ParisHawk But I did say so! About 5 hours before you asked me to confess to saying that in jest. Sorry for the confusion. I was totally kidding.
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@Lulufulu said:
@ParisHawk But I did say so! About 5 hours before you asked me to confess to saying that in jest. Sorry for the confusion. I was totally kidding.
Hm, didn’t see it but I do now. OK.
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He’s already passed all the academic hurdles along with the other players who attended the same prep school.
Most of them have been cleared now.
The delay in Cheick clearing is the NCAA now digging through other sources trying to prolong the agony because he’s at Kansas.
I wish, for once, we’d get some of that “Duke preferential treatment.”
(comedy only)
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@jaybate-1.0 Apparently. I didnt think I would get burned for being tongue and Cheick…
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PHOF
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New acronym: DPT.
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@drgnslayr @jaybate-1.0 @VailHawk I think the B.I.A. needs to get involved in this case. With the advent of the DPT vaccine by big pharma and subsequent distribution of said vaccine, the appropriate information about the benefits and risks need to be spread in an east coast biasly nature.
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It took me a couple of tries to get it but once I did, I thought your response was pretty funny…
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“Duke Dynasty Transgressions”
D D T
How appropriate…
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MEMO
FROM: @jaybate 1.0, Director/Janitor, Directorate World HQ, Langley IHOP, Langley, Virginia, BIA,
TO: @Lulufulu, Case Officer, Northeast CONUS, BIA
RE: Operation Southwood
CLASSIFICATION LEVEL: quinessentially secret
ENCRYPTION LEVEL: Quantum Pig Latin–a key found in Allen Turing’s possession just prior to his departure from this mortal coil.
Word straight from the top of the private oligarchy in ownership of a key element of the private Federal Reserve is that DPT and DDT will be appropriated and used by supposed basketball fan-terrorists as talking points in a covert plan to get Coach K another ring. The covert operation is reputedly called Operation Southwoods, and in this plan a false flag operation will be undertaken by covert Duke special ops pretending to be the KSU fans that orchestrated the Jayhawk being violated in the pornographic formation used by the KSU marching band. These basketball terrorists will be brandishing bull castration implements and will rob a dollar store of four balsa wood and rubber band propeller driven aircraft and will then storm and occupy a dormitory on Daisy Hill. From the roof of one of the dorms, these perpetrators will arm the balsa wood and rubber band driven airplanes with Black Cat and Zebra brand fire crackers taped to their fuselages and fly them into the walls of an empty Allen Field House the night before the the KU-KSU game this season, thus sparing KSU yet another humiliating beating. Allen Field House will shortly after the impacts erupt in white hot flame and the field house will fall in its own footprint. (Note: thermite charges will reputedly be used to saw the girder system of AFH at 45 degree angles and induce the collapse that could not occur simply from Black Cats and Zebra brand fire cracker detonations.) Further, all of the Daisy Hill Dorms emptied of students that will have already run down the hill to watch the collapse of their beloved field house, will, without being impacted by anything, inexplicably fall in their own foot prints. And it will subsequently be discovered in an official inquiry scoped to ignore the impact free collapses of not one but several worker housing style dormitories, that the Duke Chancellor’s adopted half brother he will claim never to have known, took over building security for Allen Field House and the Daisy Hill dorms a month before the event. This catastrophic event will then prompt BEMA COB (aka the Basketball Emergency Management Agency’s Continuity of Basketball shadow governing agency) to declare martial basketball law, suspend further NCAA competition, and arbitrarily award Coach K and Duke next season’s NCAA national title. Jeb Bush will also reputedly with draw from the National presidential campaign and be selected President of the NCAA.
Despite how fantastic all this stretcher seems, the BIA of course intends to use all of its considerable nonexistent resources available to its unfunded disposal to see that this tragic farce is not perpetrated upon college basketball, or KU, or Allen Field House. You, BIA Case Officer Lulu, have been tasked with retaining the services of former BIA Agent Ethan Dunk and his current IBMF (Impossible Basketball Missions Force) team to take down these Duke hooligans before they desecrate the greatest arena in all of sport, so as to leave the sharply inferior Cameron Indoor Events Center next in line for the rank of best basketball arena.
Of course, if you, or any of the IBMF team are exposed, captured, or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existence.
(CUE: the smoke and the Impossible Basketball Missions theme)