4 Apr
2020
4 Apr
'20
10:47 p.m.
On 4/4/20 10:15 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
In 1970, in my absolutely bottom of the totem pole job
at Goddard Space
Flight Center, I questioned the use of 2 decimal digits for the year.
(FORTRAN)? I was told, "don't be ridiculous.? All of this will be redone
long before that, and WE won't be here to be held responsible".
That was also when I learned to write comments before writing code,
since they damn sure wouldn't tolerate taking time to add comments after
the program seemed to work.
Heck, up until about 1975, the Air Force Logistics command was using IBM
7080s running COBOL with (undocumented) Autocoder patch decks.
Maintenance became an issue of "don't touch it if it works".
AFLC eventually updated their systems--to S/370 boxes running in 7080
emulation mode.
Stories like this abound. Wasn't California DMV running RCA Spectrolas
well into the 80s?
--Chuck