It is in the way the BCD calculations are integrated with COBOL, and the fact that these BCD (or even ASCII numerics) can be used everywhere without translations and special calls. You do not have to think much about your calculations, you do not have to do any special conversions, calculations are always correct, except for loss of precision of course.
It is a little bit like the way regular expressions are part of Perl. Once you have used them like that, doing the same in other languages seems two-fisted.
I think that ports of COBOL compilers to RISC platforms need slower support libraries to do the same BCD math, and it is only since a few years that a BCD arithmetic library has been ported to Java. Every other language does not come even close to the possibilities of COBOL in this respect.
For the rest, I do admit that COBOL is just an imperative language, like C or ALGOL or Pascal, but I have programmed three years in COBOL, for a transport business and for a bank, and I really cannot imagine a language that is better suited in such an environment, except maybe for one of the xBase's, which lack(ed) the necessary platform support. I have now been programming for 8 years in Perl, I did some projects in Python and Common Lisp. Common Lisp is maybe the one language where BCD arithmetic could be integrated seamlessly, due to its macro capabilities). All modern languages have too many C-quirks (like the definition of an identifier, in COBOL one can define identifiers like ADD-6-TO-VAR, or 69-GUNS).
I think about this always like this : if you want your PC cluster have the same IO capabilities as a mainframe, then you will have to add Fibre Channel to the equation, which will undo your cost savings completely.
You see, unlike the things you've listed, the mainframe really provides (as far as I know) no advantage over a modern Linux system (or cluster) other than that people already know it, and that it will run these old COBOL apps.
And for many types of jobs, IO is far, far more important than raw processor speed.
Mainframes (System/i maybe too) also have BCD computational capabilities in hardware, which is still better for financial applications (x86 only has a mode where it transforms BCD into an 80-bit float and then back).
Arabs and Iranians just don't like each other. The first because of all the incursions of the Persian empire, the second because of the Arab conquest from the 7th century.
The thing that is worst for real Iranians is that they are basically ruled by people which have more to do with Arabian than Persian culture.
All the rest I learned from the camel book. I use Perl on three platforms (Win32, Cygwin and Solaris), using the same libraries, and now also adding Perl/TK to the mix.
If you need to define several goals, I would recommend Perl Best Practices for writing maintainable and easy to read code and installing a peer review process.
HTDP is more for individual programmers, to become smarter and better programmers.
Solutions using Red Hat or SUSE (however despised they might be)
I am pretty sure there are other solutions...
I think the basic problem is impatience. I can understand that people want for business purposes something that is quickly implemented, but my experience is that when a Microsoft implementation is chosen, you have two long-term issues : you will time and time again have to solve the same problems over and over, and you can be sure that Microsoft will try to pressure you into upgrades, willing or not.
My experience with Linux and associated programs is this. Over time, everything gets better and better. Sometimes, you might need some time to investigate a problem and solve it, but once solved, it will not recur again (be sure that you have a good system to record such findings, but that would be same when using Microsoft).
I have already three people (not much, yes, but important for me) using Linux : my father, my brother (who shares with my father's PC) and my sister. Unless there is a hardware problem, I can be sure that I do not have to solve software issues on a regular basis, only help them with functional questions : what software to use and how to use it.
They use on a regular basis :
OpenOffice
GIMP
SANE based scanners
HP Deskjet printing
Firefox (Iceweasel)
Evolution and Sylpheed-Claws
Skype
Google Earth
I am pretty sure that for most parts of a business, this would be enough.
Now, I think that the usage of Exchange is more of a perception thing, than a real technical obstacle. At my work, Lotus Notes was swapped for Exchange, but I do not consider this a progress, as it reminds me too much of PCTools 4.0 or 5.0 (about 1990) : I really do not see anything innovative in this area (and while some people here seem to loathe Lotus Notes (mostly without any reasons given), it was much faster than Exchange, I find speed very important for computer programs).
Anyone here which as implemented or is using alternatives to Exchange ?
Face it : who gives out money ? The government. The amount of money printed is the inflation.
The total amount of money is limited. This means that when some people get more money, other people will have less money.
However, banks make the money that people have circulate around the system. This in contrast to most other pyramid schemes, where the bottom dwellers lost their part.
It is called marketing, and, while considered a naughty word on Slashdot, I do recommend Marketing for Dummies, which I find puts things in perspective about what marketing really is (not every company is a lying, cheating, robbing Microsoft).
Hey, this is a nice remark. You can think of it as an analogy with building chips. A wafer with many small chips has a better yield than a wafer with big chips.
Yes. So you also know the feeling of accomplishment that you get when you are able to reduce the total size of a program, it still having the same functionality (or sometimes even more) ?
The impression that I have is that Gates is someone who likes to take the front stage, and does not mind to talk about bullshit, provided it sounds convincing enough. Does any of his books or has sayings really amount to anything ?
This sentence shows that Gates is good a reinventing the wheel and saying it as if it really was him who did it.
I have been reading about and practicing creativity courses since twenty years, and it opened my eyes to see that there are many creative possibilities to help 2nd, 3rd and 4th world people. However, creating something creatively is one step, creating it affordable, simple and usable by a whole lot of people is another one. This has been reported on by Slashdot, but there are more such initiatives, sometimes by local universities in the third world. I think that the banks which give help to the poor in India by providing low-rate loans and so on, are also a form of creative capitalism.
It is also always the same with Gates : he likes to sell technological solutions for things which might be better solved first by sociological means (e.g. illiterate people here in Belgium can follow free courses to learn to read and do simple calculations, it is a government (backed) initiative).
The thing that I find most dis-ingenious about Gates statement is this. Since he talks about capitalism, is he himself prepared to invest in projects which have only small long-term gains, or is he just searching for money sink holes which give him big tax breaks ?
Gates is good at setting up smoke screens and making it appear that he has single-handedly invented fire, the wheel and sliced bread, but I do not trust him at all, he should shut up already and exit stage left.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, 1999 in my case.
Jack Vance : "The Houses of Iszm" and "Slaves of the Klau". Both feature grown houses.
It is in the way the BCD calculations are integrated with COBOL, and the fact that these BCD (or even ASCII numerics) can be used everywhere without translations and special calls. You do not have to think much about your calculations, you do not have to do any special conversions, calculations are always correct, except for loss of precision of course.
It is a little bit like the way regular expressions are part of Perl. Once you have used them like that, doing the same in other languages seems two-fisted.
I think that ports of COBOL compilers to RISC platforms need slower support libraries to do the same BCD math, and it is only since a few years that a BCD arithmetic library has been ported to Java. Every other language does not come even close to the possibilities of COBOL in this respect.
For the rest, I do admit that COBOL is just an imperative language, like C or ALGOL or Pascal, but I have programmed three years in COBOL, for a transport business and for a bank, and I really cannot imagine a language that is better suited in such an environment, except maybe for one of the xBase's, which lack(ed) the necessary platform support. I have now been programming for 8 years in Perl, I did some projects in Python and Common Lisp. Common Lisp is maybe the one language where BCD arithmetic could be integrated seamlessly, due to its macro capabilities). All modern languages have too many C-quirks (like the definition of an identifier, in COBOL one can define identifiers like ADD-6-TO-VAR, or 69-GUNS).
Financial calculations
Financial calculations
Oh, and financial calculations...
COBOL is fine, you should learn to type with 10 fingers. I once wrote a remote front-end for a minicomputer in COBOL.
Yeah, that is probably why they are going the reseller route now.
I think about this always like this : if you want your PC cluster have the same IO capabilities as a mainframe, then you will have to add Fibre Channel to the equation, which will undo your cost savings completely.
You see, unlike the things you've listed, the mainframe really provides (as far as I know) no advantage over a modern Linux system (or cluster) other than that people already know it, and that it will run these old COBOL apps.
Some points that might contradict you
And for many types of jobs, IO is far, far more important than raw processor speed.
Mainframes (System/i maybe too) also have BCD computational capabilities in hardware, which is still better for financial applications (x86 only has a mode where it transforms BCD into an 80-bit float and then back).
Arabs and Iranians just don't like each other. The first because of all the incursions of the Persian empire, the second because of the Arab conquest from the 7th century.
The thing that is worst for real Iranians is that they are basically ruled by people which have more to do with Arabian than Persian culture.
And code generated by SBCL is as fast as C++, but unfortunately does not fit in an embedded system.
Already in the 80's, with fax machines instead of the internet.
I worked three year on other peoples unreadable COBOL. Perl is at least powerful, in the same way that Common Lisp and Scheme are powerful.
Yes! Book recommendations for Perl programmers, outside of the standard ones you need :
All the rest I learned from the camel book. I use Perl on three platforms (Win32, Cygwin and Solaris), using the same libraries, and now also adding Perl/TK to the mix.
If you need to define several goals, I would recommend Perl Best Practices for writing maintainable and easy to read code and installing a peer review process.
HTDP is more for individual programmers, to become smarter and better programmers.
If you know how to bluff and when to get out of the game, you have more chances in winning at the poker table.
Non-Microsoft can be :
I think the basic problem is impatience. I can understand that people want for business purposes something that is quickly implemented, but my experience is that when a Microsoft implementation is chosen, you have two long-term issues : you will time and time again have to solve the same problems over and over, and you can be sure that Microsoft will try to pressure you into upgrades, willing or not.
My experience with Linux and associated programs is this. Over time, everything gets better and better. Sometimes, you might need some time to investigate a problem and solve it, but once solved, it will not recur again (be sure that you have a good system to record such findings, but that would be same when using Microsoft).
I have already three people (not much, yes, but important for me) using Linux : my father, my brother (who shares with my father's PC) and my sister. Unless there is a hardware problem, I can be sure that I do not have to solve software issues on a regular basis, only help them with functional questions : what software to use and how to use it.
They use on a regular basis :
I am pretty sure that for most parts of a business, this would be enough.
Now, I think that the usage of Exchange is more of a perception thing, than a real technical obstacle. At my work, Lotus Notes was swapped for Exchange, but I do not consider this a progress, as it reminds me too much of PCTools 4.0 or 5.0 (about 1990) : I really do not see anything innovative in this area (and while some people here seem to loathe Lotus Notes (mostly without any reasons given), it was much faster than Exchange, I find speed very important for computer programs).
Anyone here which as implemented or is using alternatives to Exchange ?
Money IS a pyramid scheme.
Face it : who gives out money ? The government. The amount of money printed is the inflation.
The total amount of money is limited. This means that when some people get more money, other people will have less money.
However, banks make the money that people have circulate around the system. This in contrast to most other pyramid schemes, where the bottom dwellers lost their part.
That surely was not the case, because living at home means parents tell you when to eat.
When I was at school and had to learn hard for examinations, I always had more hunger than on normal days.
It is called marketing, and, while considered a naughty word on Slashdot, I do recommend Marketing for Dummies, which I find puts things in perspective about what marketing really is (not every company is a lying, cheating, robbing Microsoft).
Hey, this is a nice remark. You can think of it as an analogy with building chips. A wafer with many small chips has a better yield than a wafer with big chips.
Yes. So you also know the feeling of accomplishment that you get when you are able to reduce the total size of a program, it still having the same functionality (or sometimes even more) ?
YVAN EHT NIOJ
Fixed it for you
You know that here in this non-existent country the liberals are considered right-wing ?
Fire is the manifestation of the energy released in the burning process. The better analogy would be that fuel can be alive, when it burns.
I think that you owe it to Compaq that personal computing dropped in price, not Microsoft.
The impression that I have is that Gates is someone who likes to take the front stage, and does not mind to talk about bullshit, provided it sounds convincing enough. Does any of his books or has sayings really amount to anything ?
This is basicaly the stage of 'learning a man to fish' instead of giving him a fish.
This sentence shows that Gates is good a reinventing the wheel and saying it as if it really was him who did it.
I have been reading about and practicing creativity courses since twenty years, and it opened my eyes to see that there are many creative possibilities to help 2nd, 3rd and 4th world people. However, creating something creatively is one step, creating it affordable, simple and usable by a whole lot of people is another one. This has been reported on by Slashdot, but there are more such initiatives, sometimes by local universities in the third world. I think that the banks which give help to the poor in India by providing low-rate loans and so on, are also a form of creative capitalism.
It is also always the same with Gates : he likes to sell technological solutions for things which might be better solved first by sociological means (e.g. illiterate people here in Belgium can follow free courses to learn to read and do simple calculations, it is a government (backed) initiative).
The thing that I find most dis-ingenious about Gates statement is this. Since he talks about capitalism, is he himself prepared to invest in projects which have only small long-term gains, or is he just searching for money sink holes which give him big tax breaks ?
Gates is good at setting up smoke screens and making it appear that he has single-handedly invented fire, the wheel and sliced bread, but I do not trust him at all, he should shut up already and exit stage left.