lorddimwit, to retrocomputing
@lorddimwit@mastodon.social avatar

SHAKA. WHEN THE WALLS FELL.
DARMOK AND JALAD.
AT TANAGRA.
TEMBA. HIS ARMS WIDE.
SOKATH HIS EYES UNCOVERED.
AT EL-ADREL.
ON THE OCEAN.
DARMOK AND JALAD. THEY LEFT TOGETHER.

liw, to random

Digital computers have existed since at least 1945 (ENIAC). That's 78 years ago. The pace of change in computing is remarkably fast, and it's unusual to have things that have existed for a long time. Here's a few that have been used for at least 50 years (i.e., they existed in 1973), even if they've changed over time and the original version may not be compatible with the modern world:

  • 3.5 mm TRS audio plug (1950s)
  • ASCII (1963)
  • EBCDIC (1963)
  • C (1972)

Can you think of others?

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@liw
is still in use, 1957;
, many current significant uses, 1958;
, 1959, has its niches, mainly in finance.

Fundamentally most third-generation languages trace their ancestry to the late fifties/early sixties. C is just minor syntactic sugar on top of BCPL (1967).

vmagnin,

@simon_brooke @liw
Not only and are still in use but their ISO standards were both revised in 2023:

MHowell, to commodore64

When people ask what the average age of your platforms users are,...

... and why it is not attracting more, young users...

@lowqualityfacts

Hbautista, to random Spanish

NEORIS lanza la primera edición de Next Gen Bootcamp!
Si eres estudiante universitario o recién graduado, y te encuentras en Argentina, México, Colombia o Perú, no dejes pasar esta oportunidad, toda la información para inscribirte aquí: https://neoris.com/es/cobol-bootcamp

landley, to random
@landley@mstdn.jp avatar

I don't remember anyone ever saying their software was "thanks to pascal" or "because of visual basic" but the rust guys are an outright cult. It's "java everywhere" all over again: the most important thing about a piece of software is it was written in The Right Language, not what it does. How dare you not program in this language, resistance is useless it shall consume the world and exclude all else forevermore...

https://mastodon.social/@steveorevo/111271623840845586

kkarhan,

@landley
Programming Languages are just tools, and whilst fancy toolkits make getting things done easier, I'm convinced someone with more experience on an older tool will be faster than someone without on a newer tool trying to accomplish the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8

Because tools are only as good as the one wielding them knows how to use them.

That's why stuff is still written in , , #C and the like:

Because being able to have auditable code and reproduceability is important!

kkarhan, (edited ) to web3 German

Personally, I think that #Solidity is not good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdvVwGrV7ec

Not because it's #solutionism at it's worst aka. #web3...

But because it has serious issues in terms of #ITsec & #InfoSec:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidity#Criticism

And it's being used in a "#cooperative #bank #ButWorse" scam...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO#Risks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

kkarhan,

In short, I don't think adds any value to the world and it's like learning instead if or in it's unique and weird ways and it doesn't even provide any transferable compared to say ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d7-etf-wNI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL

reflets, to random French

Reflets annonce dans un communiqué de presse son intention de racheter

Kitishin,
mainframed767, to VintageOSes
mamund, to Java
@mamund@mastodon.social avatar

IBM taps AI to translate COBOL code to Java

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/22/ibm-taps-ai-to-translate-cobol-code-to-java/

"Code Assistant for IBM Z is designed to assist businesses in refactoring their mainframe apps, ideally while preserving performance and security, according to IBM Research chief scientist Ruchir Puri." --

walkerb, to OpenAI

Because it got late last time, I removed a feature from the COBOL version of my AI song challenge generator. Its date was hard coded.

Tonight I remedied that, learning about dates in COBOL (fun) and how to implement the equivalent of console.log and a breakpoint.

Once again the music of the night was Spiritbox.

The date computation code - returns current month if day < 16, or next month otherwise as MMM YYYY
End output

walkerb, to OpenAI

"Now do it in COBOL"

Was a comment I got from a friend who really is a 10x engineer.

I took her up on her challenge.

Never worked with COBOL before tonight so this is decidedly linear code, but it works and calls GPT-4...

🙇‍♂️​

https://github.com/nakedmcse/CobolSong

COBOL code showing the prompt

r_ivorra, to programming

Here's a list of 9 languages which are supposedly "heading for extinction". But, are they? It includes #R, , / , , or ...

https://www.makeuseof.com/programming-languages-heading-for-extinction/

mainframed767, to random

Rogue, but its made using CICS transactions, in COBOL.

I think the biggest issue would be you can only use F keys for movement, etc.

mjgardner, to VisualBasic
@mjgardner@social.sdf.org avatar

@ChristosArgyrop Bad news, according to this “Make Use Of” #clickbait both #Rlang and #Perl are “heading for extinction” along with #VisualBasic (and #VBA), #Haskell, #Fortran, #COBOL, #ActionScript (the language in discontinued #AdobeFlash), and #Pascal: https://apple.news/A9sb4_KhEQoeIdeulO_zfgw

The text hedges the headline’s assertion for every entry above. And of course, it cites #TIOBE.

It’s also syndicated on #MSN, which has had, um, quality control problems lately: https://futurism.com/msn-ai-brandon-hunter-useless

srfirehorseart, to tech
@srfirehorseart@ohai.social avatar

Currently feeling nostalgic for my mainframe coding days.

As a contractor, I had work at various sites around England and Wales. Moved around a lot. Good income but terrible for my social life.

I was very happy to eventually settle in one place for a few years.

Now I'm wondering if it's possible to get remote work in this line?

riotnrrd, to ai
@riotnrrd@mastodon.social avatar

This idea of using to translate code into has one big problem.

The goal is reasonable: ancient COBOL code is effectively a black box, hard to modify or extend and even harder to debug.

But who is validating the Java output? A big part of the problem is how difficult it is to understand the business logic that the COBOL was implementing — but all that analysis work is still required to evaluate the correctness of the Java, plus Java debugging!

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/22/ibm-taps-ai-to-translate-cobol-code-to-java/

MartinWdd, to random German

Ich höre gerade https://open.spotify.com/episode/4AxqQXXkwkQOuPCWLGU0Xl?si=MeAXv9crQV27FnsKZ2Bx5Q&context=spotify%3Acollection%3Apodcasts%3Aepisodes

Leider wusste ich in den 90ern nicht, dass bei DOS dabei war - ich hatte nur die „Shell“-Programmierung mit GOTO und IF ERRORLEVEL gefunden und bin damit schnell an Grenzen gestoßen

remy9999,

@MartinWdd

haben wir es immer genannt in ..

, , , waren damals richtig gute Sprachen. Zumindest war der Code im Nachhinein noch lesbar und einigermaßen nachvollziehbar.

ChristosArgyrop, to programming

Popularity of languages from August ( is 28 at 0.68%).
Has its limitations, but a couple of points worth noting :

  1. and are holding rather well
  2. languages that are involved in some sort of data analysis and processing (, /c++) are doing very well. Not sure what to make of ; are ppl in seeing through the reality is a scripting over extremely performant c/c++ and that there are other lang that can glue as well?
    & are ⬆️
AstraKernel, to Java

IBM says GenAI can convert that old COBOL code to Java for you

-> I saw in the timeline and went to check if it is fake post, nope it is true 😌

https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/22/ibm_says_genai_can_convert/

jbzfn, to generativeAI
@jbzfn@mastodon.social avatar

📰 IBM’s generative AI tool aims to refactor ancient COBOL code for its mainframes
➥ Ars Technica

「 Or you might argue that AI-generated and restructured code might look proper and seem test-ready, but without the people around who know exactly why the code does the things it does, AI-upscaled code could have just as much noise as AI-upscaled video 」


https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ibms-generative-ai-tool-aims-to-refactor-ancient-cobol-code-for-its-mainframes/

readbeanicecream, to programming
readbeanicecream avatar

IBM’s generative AI tool aims to refactor ancient COBOL code for its mainframes: Humans are still "in the driver's seat," but it could make code more modular.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ibms-generative-ai-tool-aims-to-refactor-ancient-cobol-code-for-its-mainframes/
#software #programming #coding #cobol #ibm #ai #artificialintelligence

itnewsbot, to generativeAI

IBM’s generative AI tool aims to refactor ancient COBOL code for its mainframes - Enlarge / COBOL 73, as seen (inside Windows) in the IRS's Austin, Texas... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1962519

brennansv, to ai
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

So this is what IBM has been up to in the age of ChatGPT. Gotta keep that COBOL working.

https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/110939906290567770

bobchauvin,
@bobchauvin@mastodon.world avatar

@brennansv

I worked on Y2K code updates for grocery store corporate. Definitely learned to loathe .

Good times 🤣

ai6yr, to Java
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

LOL using AI to convert an ancient language into a questionable one (having been a professional Java programmer in my lifetime... not my favorite language. Unless you like to chase infinite memory leaks and apps which keep on getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger until they use all the memory available on your system.) https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/22/ibm-taps-ai-to-translate-cobol-code-to-java/

jeanthejust,
@jeanthejust@m.ai6yr.org avatar

@ai6yr I liked . Very easy to learn, and user friendly compared with assembly language. Fortunately I stopped programming in 1981.

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