From: "Nick May" <nick@kyushu.com>
> Not that it matters a curse either way, but I was curious to hear that
> docomo in Kyushu use a Fujitsu mainframe to handle imode email, running
> cobol.
Wonderful hacker urban legend material, if not actually true And it could
be true. Legacy systems cling to life, or some semblance of life, the way
those zombies did in George Romero films.
I went to a job fair last year where Todd Newfeld (sp?) of Flying Color
strongly warned against taking on web-work clients who used "COBAL" [sic].
I wonder if he'd be singing the same bluesy tune if a fat DoCoMo contract
came his way.
I've had nothing to do with the language since an abortive attempt to learn
it in high school. However I must say, at some risk of tarnishing my Great
Consultant image, that if you gave me the choice, sight unseen, between
fixing piles of Perl CGI code and fixing piles of COBOL CGI code (yes, it's
been done; why not?), I'd bite the bullet and learn COBOL. (This is not
flamebait -- reply personally if you beg to differ.)
COBOL is dead the same way the Beach Boys are dead: nothing new, but the old
goes on and on ....
> Is this the same across Japan?
As of version 666. But boy are they gonna catch it for this. Heard about
the Y2002 bug, coming on "Apl 1"? You see, 2002 is the only palindromic
year-number of this century, and ... oh, it's too complicated to explain
.... but if anybody here knows somebody at DoCoMo who wants it explained to
them, tell them I'm available.
For a price.
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
Received on Fri Jan 11 12:05:23 2002