morse@leadsv.UUCP (Terry Morse) (07/10/85)
Has anybody any anecdotes I could use to convince someone to convert from
COBOL on an IBM mini to anything else on UNIX? They're not doing accounting
stuff and are very conservative.
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-- Peter da Silva (the mad Australian)
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Terry Morse (408)743-1487
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UUCP: seismo!nsc!cae780!leadsv!morseignatz@aicchi.UUCP (Ihnat) (07/16/85)
. Line-eater bug? Ridiculous! I refuse to include useless lines for it! In article 522@leadsv.UUCP, Peter da Silva (apparently posted for him by Terry Morse?) writes: "Has anybody any anecdotes I could use to convince someone to convert from COBOL on an IBM mini to anything else on UNIX? They're not doing accounting stuff and are very conservative." Well, I certainly don't know all the issues in this situation. Also, I want you all to know that COBOL is one of the few languages of the many I've picked up that I'm quite happy to totally forget. Nevertheless, it's necessary that I point out that you may not really want them to always convert to, say, 'C'. Obviously, I cannot/will not divulge the name of the company involved; but a situation arose wherein individuals working for a company which was heavily committed to COBOL decided that, on a certain micro-computer, their applications would run much more efficiently if done in 'C'. The trouble was that they were quite adequately staffed for COBOL programming teams, and had a good COBOL training program and staff. Against our recommendations, however, they decided to go ahead and use 'C'. The application did, indeed, show significant improvement in performance and efficiency. BUT--they didn't have an adequate 'C' development environment; they discovered that good 'C' programmers are commanding top dollar--much more than they were used to paying for COBOL programmers--and, of course, their training setup wasn't geared to bringing new programmers up to speed in 'C'. In the end, they decided that--for their purposes--they'd stay with COBOL and look for a better compiler. The point? Simply that you have to approach changes with caution, and a good understanding of the possibility that there may be factors affecting such decisions which go beyond the simple fact of efficiency or machine performance. Cautious planning avoids bad experiences that could sour them on 'C' forever, even in extremely desirable circumstances. Cheers, -- Dave Ihnat Analysts International Corporation (312) 882-4673 ihnp4!aicchi!ignatz