Lloyd, My father was a Unisys CE at the Fort for many years...
Scott Ford Senior Systems Engineer www.identityforge.com On Apr 17, 2012, at 8:17 AM, Lloyd Fuller <[email protected]> wrote: > In 1969, and until sometime in the 1970s or later, the Army programming > school > was at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. > > > Graduated in March 1969 as a Staff Sergeant converted to a SP6. Programming > since then. > > lLOYD > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Ed Gould <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Tue, April 17, 2012 12:16:33 AM > Subject: Re: GO TO "cobol" > > On Apr 16, 2012, at 8:34 AM, McKown, John wrote: >> ----------------SNIP--------------------------------- >> Also remember that COBOL, at least originally, was supposed to be very >> English-like and so usable by people at the Army PFC level of training. >> >> --John McKown >> Systems Engineer IV >> IT > > Hmmm... I was in the Army and we got PFC's from the programming school (AZ? > its > been 40 years so forgive me). We had two groups, one COBOL (batch processing) > and one ASM group (essentially sysprogs). The ASM group was by far the best > IMO. > I was on call quite often and had to "fix" the cobol programs that went boom > in > the middle of the night. The COBOL people were semi useless in debugging and > when I looked at the code they had produced (except for a few people) it was > hopeless to understand. I spent more time trying to figure out the logic and > compare what I was seeing in the dump. 1/3 the time I helped the programmer > figure out where his problem was and supplying answers to his questions on > what > was in this field or that field. > What was interesting was that as the guys (no female programmers so don't > call > me sexist blame the Army not me) as they became more experienced the code > became > easier to follow. As they became became better programmers there were less > logic > problems. Now having said that most of the programs were smallish and only a > few were considered large so the smallish programs there was no excuse for > logic > issues or mangled code. My memory is foggy here as to goto's but I think the > "rule" no standards if memory serves me that goto's were to be minimized as a > result flow was easier to follow and frankly debugging was easier. > > Ed > > ps: We had one person who at the time he was drafted was working for IBM and > he > privately told me about some OS enhancements that when I first heard I > couldn't > wrap my head around as virtual (at least that I had never heard of) was a > nightmare that I couldn't wrap my head around. After I got out of the Army (2 > years) IBM announced Virtual and I was able to ask some semi intelligent > questions as my "preview" and the questions helped jump start by job. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
