I have. It's my job. For those of you who have not encountered COBOL, its reputation is warranted. It is actually designed for clueless suits and it will damage you, both mentally and physically. This is true.
When I was in school, I was forced to learn this language. COBOL is hell, but as not as much as the people who instructed the classes. Some will go as far as proclaiming you a "heathen" for doing a loop, which is actually something that happened to me once.
I've once withstood half an hour of conversation (the kind that makes your ears ring), about whether a chunk of code would work or not. Needless to say that the argument "That's not the way you're supposed to do it" was the most convincing argument she had. In the end, it worked, and was more elegant than her solution. I never showed my face in that class again, and on my finals simply used long and boring pieces of code that would take me 3 times as long to type as a loop.
This is why I love C, C++, Perl, bash, JavaScript, BASIC, HTML, Brainf*ck - hell, I even prefer VB - anything but fscking COBOL!
From the above languages I'd leave out BASIC, brainf*ck and VB as well. BASIC has scarred me for life, although it was the very first programming language I ever learned. VB is just as evil, only now it's got widgets. And brainf*ck... Despite it's original concept (and the fact that writing a parser is easy), it really is a pain in the buttocks to read code.
July 1997 The empire strikes back: IE 4.0
"Internet Explorer 4 promises a change that Netscape may be unable to match: it lets you integrate the browser directly into the operating system. A copy of IE 4 will be included in every copy of Memphis (Windows 98), the Windows 95 successor due in early next year."
Ah, that brings back memories... A solid move from MS to kill off it's competition. I haven't thought about windows without a browser for a couple of years now, and from the looks of things now, I'll never have to think of it again.
April 1999 Internet Explorer 5
"Microsoft leapfrogs Netscape with a faster, smarter Internet Explorer."
And to think I never used that one, and sticked to Nutscrape for such a long time before switching to opera and then firefox.
July 2000 It's official: Microsoft must split
"On June 8, US federal judge Thomas P Jackson ordered the break-up of the software giant Microsoft. One company will keep the Windows operating system, while a second will handle software apps such as Office and IE. Microsoft now has four months to submit a plan for 'divestiture', as the break-up is being called. Despite this 'final' decree, Microsoft has filed an application for appeal..."
I don't like this, and not for the reason that we're breaking tradition, but we're entering the domain of applying new features to a branch that should be stable. If it's all bugfixes and tweaking you won't hear me object, but as soon as we're adding widely untested features into a stable branch I'm going to be extra cautious about rolling out 2.6 kernels on production machines.
As far as leaving the final stabilization to the distributors, do you really think that is such a good idea? The company I work for has a strict policy of vanilla-kernels-only. The reason behind that is that some companies enjoy stuffing the kernel with things from the unstable branch, making sure their distribution is more bleeding edge, but leave the bleeding up the end-user/administrator.
What's wrong with the cautious approach of keeping a stable branch? Anything new in the unstable branch can always be backported to it, and if it proves too much work or too much of an ugly hack, leave it in the unstable branch with the all too familiar warning: if it breaks, we warned you.
My guess is that I'm going to have to start believing the rumors that people are spreading, that 2.6 was released before it's time, and that I should stick to 2.4 for a little while longer on production machines. Not to be ungrateful for the enormous amounts of work developers around the world have done, but can you be a little more specific to the end-user/administrator what the effects on the vanilla 2.6 kernels will be? Are you going to change things so drastically that it might become unstable?
In my experience, it probably was not totally the QA department's... or the coder's... fault either. It was probably shitty managers paying too little attention to the need to allocate sufficient time for QA and realistic testing environments.
Ah, yes, but now you are a step higher on the corporate ladder, and while in conversation with colleages the finger of blame always points up, in conversation with the boss however the finger always points down that ladder. Management is never to blame for bugs.
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When I was in school, I was forced to learn this language. COBOL is hell, but as not as much as the people who instructed the classes. Some will go as far as proclaiming you a "heathen" for doing a loop, which is actually something that happened to me once.
I've once withstood half an hour of conversation (the kind that makes your ears ring), about whether a chunk of code would work or not. Needless to say that the argument "That's not the way you're supposed to do it" was the most convincing argument she had. In the end, it worked, and was more elegant than her solution. I never showed my face in that class again, and on my finals simply used long and boring pieces of code that would take me 3 times as long to type as a loop.
From the above languages I'd leave out BASIC, brainf*ck and VB as well. BASIC has scarred me for life, although it was the very first programming language I ever learned. VB is just as evil, only now it's got widgets. And brainf*ck... Despite it's original concept (and the fact that writing a parser is easy), it really is a pain in the buttocks to read code.
Ah, that brings back memories... A solid move from MS to kill off it's competition. I haven't thought about windows without a browser for a couple of years now, and from the looks of things now, I'll never have to think of it again.
And to think I never used that one, and sticked to Nutscrape for such a long time before switching to opera and then firefox.
I wonder whatever happened? :)
I don't like this, and not for the reason that we're breaking tradition, but we're entering the domain of applying new features to a branch that should be stable. If it's all bugfixes and tweaking you won't hear me object, but as soon as we're adding widely untested features into a stable branch I'm going to be extra cautious about rolling out 2.6 kernels on production machines.
As far as leaving the final stabilization to the distributors, do you really think that is such a good idea? The company I work for has a strict policy of vanilla-kernels-only. The reason behind that is that some companies enjoy stuffing the kernel with things from the unstable branch, making sure their distribution is more bleeding edge, but leave the bleeding up the end-user/administrator.
What's wrong with the cautious approach of keeping a stable branch? Anything new in the unstable branch can always be backported to it, and if it proves too much work or too much of an ugly hack, leave it in the unstable branch with the all too familiar warning: if it breaks, we warned you.
My guess is that I'm going to have to start believing the rumors that people are spreading, that 2.6 was released before it's time, and that I should stick to 2.4 for a little while longer on production machines. Not to be ungrateful for the enormous amounts of work developers around the world have done, but can you be a little more specific to the end-user/administrator what the effects on the vanilla 2.6 kernels will be? Are you going to change things so drastically that it might become unstable?
Ah, yes, but now you are a step higher on the corporate ladder, and while in conversation with colleages the finger of blame always points up, in conversation with the boss however the finger always points down that ladder. Management is never to blame for bugs.