First off, while I bear some responsibility for helping this thread veer
off-topic, I *did* say, in one of my posts, to write replies to my comments
personally, insofar as they are about COBOL and not about keitai.
Our only hope of pertinence now is that someone on the list will, for sheer
hack value (or reverse hack value, really) write an iAppli in COBOL. This
would be a pathetic, sterile exercise in ... what? Pathetic sterility?
Sterile pathos? I don't know. Words fail.
The quick and dirty way would be to use a COBOL to Java translator. Here
are a few for starters. I know you're on the edge of your seat now.
From Sun:
http://industry.java.sun.com/solutions/products/by_product/0,2348,all-803-99
,00.html
There's PerCOBOL. Will do applets, so there's hope (if you call this
"hope" -- I'd say "greater danger of damnation".). Good luck fitting in a
10K footprint though.
http://www.synkronix.com/
From comptramatics (or is that "comptraumatics"?), you can get translation
services, though it's not clear they have a translation product. Their web
page
www.comptramatics.com
is notable for the ennobling sentiment "If you reach for the stars there is
no limit to what you can achieve". It might, in this context, more
plausibly suggest "if you troll the gutters ceaselessly, you can sometimes
find money." But their page is also notable for all its open source
cross-branding boilerplace (Star Office, Suse Linux). How jarringly
incongruous. Starry-eyed computing idealists as mercenaries in Elbonia.
But you know what? I wouldn't be surprised if they are making money.
Japan being the legacy-system Olduvai Gorge that it is, you could probably
even drum up some interest. "Pipe your 3270 screens to a P503i!" Weirder
things have gotten funded here. Don't ask me how.
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
> On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Donal O'Shea wrote:
>
> > What's wrong with COBOL. It works. In fact combined with a mainframe it
> > allows for reliable applications--a concept unknown and unknowable to
> > most people today!
[Curt Sampson]
> COBOL (and I'm not worried at all that some people on this list
> can't spell it properly--that's probably a good thing) doesn't
> allow for buffer overflows.
[snip]
Received on Sat Jan 12 18:37:43 2002