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Why did the chicken cross the road?
Assembler Chicken: First, it builds the road ......
C Chicken: It crosses the road without looking both ways.
C++ Chicken: The chicken wouldn't have to cross the road, you' d simply refer to him on the other side.
COBOL Chicken: 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES
THEN PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
ELSE
GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING
Cray Chicken: Crosses faster than any other chicken, but if you don't dip it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side frazzled.
Delphi Chicken: The chicken is dragged across the road and dropped on the other side.
Gopher Chicken: Tried to run but got beaten by the Web chicken.
Intel Pentium Chicken: The chicken crossed 4.9999978 times.
Iomega Chicken: The chicken should have ' backed up' before crossing.
Java Chicken: If your road needs to be crossed by a chicken, then the server will download one to the other side. (Of course, those are chicklets.) See also WMI Monitor.
Linux Chicken: Don't you *dare* try to cross the road the same way we do!
Mac Chicken: No reasonable chicken owner would want a chicken to cross the road, so there's no way to tell it how to cross the road.
Newton Chicken: Can't cluck, can't fly, and can't lay eggs, but you can carry it across the road in your pocket.
OOP Chicken: It doesn't need to cross the road, it just sends a message.
OS/2 Chicken: It crossed the road in style years ago, but it was so quiet that nobody noticed.
Microsoft's Chicken: It's already on both sides of the road. What's more its just bought the road.
Windows 95 Chicken: You see different coloured feathers while it crosses, but when you cook it still tastes like........ chicken.
Quantum Logic Chicken: The chicken is distributed probabilistically on all sides of the road until you observe it on the side of your choice.
VB Chicken: USHighways! <TheRoad.cross> (aChicken)
XP Chicken Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on running.
The Longhorn Chicken had an identity crisis and is now calling itself Vista.
The Vista Chicken dazzled itself with its own graphics.20 -
someone who thought me about computer when i was a child. someone who thought me machine code, and cobol. someone who thought me about the world. now he is, my dad, hospitalized again (12th times already this year) for cardiac arrest. and today, he is getting better and showing a lot of progress.
This situation thought me again about how life works and how hard can it be. my dad divorced with my mom since i am 3 months old and i've been living with my aunt since. and now he married again with a women with 2 child. i though he was gonna be happy. and apparently not. at the time of the cardiac arrest, his wife don't even want to bother and getting involved if her husband got anything emergency like this, every single thing is thrown at me (or my aunt), from calling the ambulance, paying the hospital and medical bills, accompany my dad, every minor perks, Everything and Always. Once, i reach the point and i'm very angry to her, but my dad always hold me back. and now i don't even want to bother, care, or whatever to his wife again. i just care for my father.
This will temper me more and more, for anyone who searching for your love of your life, please be careful. there is still alot of woman who doesnt have any heart.
Life is hard.
10 -
This might sound cliché, but my dad. I called him Pop. He was a COBOL programmer, and he taught me the fundamentals. He would bring home his work and debug on paper, and I was his rubber duck.
When I got older, we were each other's rubber duck. Whenever I was stuck, he'd throw a suggestion out that might have seemed off base at first, but was somehow related to what I was working on.5 -
You can believe or not but it’s just one of those stories. It’s long and crazy and it probably happened.
A few years ago I was interviewed by this big insurance company. They asked me on linkedin and were interested. They didn’t specify who they were so I didn’t specify who I am either.
After they revealed who they are I was just curious how they fuck they want to spend those billions of dollars they claimed in their press notes about this fucking digital transformation everyone is talking about. The numbers were big.
I got into 3 or 4 phone/skype interviews without technical questions and I was invited to see them by person.
I know that it would be funny because they didn’t asked me for CV so they didn’t know anything about me and I was just more curious how far I can get without revealing myself.
They canceled interview at midnight and I was in the middle of Louis de Funès comedies marathon so I didn’t sleep whole night. I assumed they would just reschedule but then they phoned me at 8 am if I can come because they made mistake.
So at first talk I was just interviewed by some manager I knowed after 5 minutes he would be shitty as fuck and demand stupid things in no time because he is not technical. He was trying to explain me that they got so great people and they do everything so fast.
From my experience speed and programming are not the things that match. ( for reference of my thought see three virtues of a GREAT programmer )
So I just pissed them off by asking what they would do with me when I finish this transformation thingy next year. ( Probably get rid off and fire at some point were my thoughts )
Then I got this technical interview on newest gold color MacBook pro - pair programming ( they were showing off how much money they have all the time ).
The person asked me to transform json and get some data in javascript .
Really that was the thing and I was so bored and tired that I just asked in what ES standard I can code.
The problem was despite he told me I can do anything and they are using newest standards ( yeah right ) the “for of” loop didn’t worked and he even didn’t know that syntax existed. So I explained him it’s the newest syntax pointing mozilla page and that he need to adjust his configuration. Because we didn’t have time for that I just did it using var an function by writing bunch of code.
When he was asking me if I want to write some tests probably because my code looked ugly as fuck ( I didn’t sleep for more then 24 hours at that point and wanted to live the building as fast as I can) I told I finished and there is no time for tests because it’s so simple and dumb task. The code worked.
After showing me how awesome their office is ( yeah please I work from home so I don’t care ) I got into the talk with VP of engineering and he was the only person who asked me where is my CV because he didn’t know what to talk about. I just laughed at him and told him that I got here just by talking how awesome I am so we can talk about whatever he wants.
After quick talk about 4 different problems where I introduced 4 different languages and bunch of libraries just because I can and I worked with those he was mine.
He told me about this awesome stack they’re building with kubernetes and micro services and the shitty future where they want to put IOT into peoples ass to sell them insurance and suddenly I got awake and started to want that job but behind that all awesomeness there was just .NET bridge with stack of mainframes running COBOL that they want to get rid off and move company to the cloud.
They needed mostly people who would dump code to different technology stack and get rid of old stack ( and probably those old people ) and I was bored again because I work more in r&d field where you sometimes need to think about something that don’t exist and be creative.
I asked him why it would take so much time so he explained me how they would do the transformation by consolidating bunch of companies and how much money they would make by probably firing people that don’t know about it to this day.
I didn’t met any person working permanently there but only consultants from corporations and people hired in some 3rd party company created by this mother company.
They didn’t responded with any decision after me wasting so much time and they asked me for interview for another position year after.
I just explained HR person how they treat people and I don’t want to work there for any money.
If You reached this point it is the end and if it was entertaining thank YOU I did my best.
Have a nice day.5 -
A Cobol programmer made so much money doing Y2K remediation that he was able to have himself cryogenically frozen when he died. One day in the future, he was unexpectedly resurrected.
When he asked why he was unfrozen, he was told:
"It's the year 9999 - and you know Cobol" -
A memorial for my favorite rant of all time "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Assembler Chicken: First, it builds the road ......
C Chicken: It crosses the road without looking both ways.
C++ Chicken: The chicken wouldn't have to cross the road, you' d simply refer to him on the other side.
COBOL Chicken: 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES
THEN PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
ELSE
GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING
Cray Chicken: Crosses faster than any other chicken, but if you don't dip it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side frazzled.
Delphi Chicken: The chicken is dragged across the road and dropped on the other side.
Gopher Chicken: Tried to run but got beaten by the Web chicken.
Intel Pentium Chicken: The chicken crossed 4.9999978 times.
Iomega Chicken: The chicken should have ' backed up' before crossing.
Java Chicken: If your road needs to be crossed by a chicken, then the server will download one to the other side. (Of course, those are chicklets.) See also WMI Monitor.
Linux Chicken: Don't you *dare* try to cross the road the same way we do!
Mac Chicken: No reasonable chicken owner would want a chicken to cross the road, so there's no way to tell it how to cross the road.
Newton Chicken: Can't cluck, can't fly, and can't lay eggs, but you can carry it across the road in your pocket.
OOP Chicken: It doesn't need to cross the road, it just sends a message.
OS/2 Chicken: It crossed the road in style years ago, but it was so quiet that nobody noticed.
Microsoft's Chicken: It's already on both sides of the road. What's more its just bought the road.
Windows 95 Chicken: You see different coloured feathers while it crosses, but when you cook it still tastes like........ chicken.
Quantum Logic Chicken: The chicken is distributed probabilistically on all sides of the road until you observe it on the side of your choice.
VB Chicken: USHighways! <TheRoad.cross> (aChicken)
XP Chicken Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on running.
The Longhorn Chicken had an identity crisis and is now calling itself Vista.
The Vista Chicken dazzled itself with its own graphics.21 -
The best thing about having COBOL in my last internship is not that it opens you a lot of new job opportunities, is the look of fear and respect of your coworkers when you say that you learned it.1
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GO AND FUCK YOURSELVES. MANY PEOPLE RANT ABOUT JOB HUBTING AND INSANE REQUIREMENTS. SO HERE IN SPAIN I'M SURE THE SITUATION IS WORSE. NO FUCKING JOBS. WHEN YOU FIND AN OFFER THAT DOESN'T MENTION PHP, JAVA OR COBOL OHH. YOU NEED TO BE A FUCKING WP, FULL STACK, ANDROID AND IOS DEVELOPER, A FUCKING SYSADMIN AND HAVE 99 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE. SO YOU CAN SAY: hey search a junior offer! YEAH SURE ONE SECOND. 4-15 FUCKING YEARS OF FUCKING EXPERIENCE. GO AND FUCK YOURSELVES AAAAH
7 -
COBOL is something I use at work. Typically, you see IF blocks like this
IF condition
Stuff
END-IF.
But the END-IF part if actually optional. You can just use a period and it does the same thing.
IF condition
Stuff.
Many headaches if not caught when reading.6 -
!rant, but kinda
My new director wants to buy a solution for a portal environment that my institution currently has. I have no qualms over it. My only issue was the company that sells it to be known to provide close to 0 fucking support when shit arises.
During a presentation we were told that they were using state of the art JAVA technology to render items on the page and that their ApI was easy for devs to grasp. This caught my attention since I know of very few and obscure Java frameworks that work with frontend tech (as in, your frontend logic is legit in Java)
The sales people proceed to show us React. Obviously thinking that no one knows what REact was. The dude continues with "This is new Java tech" all proud and shit prompting me to interject that it is "Javascript" the dude brushes it away saying "same thing" to which I reply with "Negative, please make sure that you properly discern Java from Javascript since Java is to Javascript as car is to carpet, completely different environments" the dude sarcastically says that "oh well, didn't know one of the people here was more aware of our own technology than we are" to which I say "and not only that, but the final say in us adopting your tech is mine, so I would rather you keep the sarcasm and the attitude to yourself, bring in a tech person if need be and learn these distinctions since we don't work with Java"
My new director later on went to talk to me since he apparently thought that Java and JS were related in some way. I can't really fault it, last time the dude touched programming was in the early 2000s, previous boss was a C and COBOL developer, but the previous dude would ALWAYS take my word no questions ask, this dude was there asking me if I was sure that Javascript and Java were really completely different environments asking me to show him.
I do not like to be questioned. I shoot the shit here and don't really involve myself with more technical aspects under this platform unless it involves concrete architecture discussions and even there I really don't care with engaging on a forum concerning that. But concerning my job I really.......really do not like to be questioned by people that know way the fuck less than me. I started coding when I was 17, I am 30 now, with a degree and years of experience. I really hate to be questioned by this dude.2 -
I've just opened LinkedIn (I don't know why) and I found an hilarious job offered in the home page: they are searching a JUNIOR programmer (for an internship) having experience in RPG IV programming language and OS/400. I never heard of that so I googled it and... LMAO.5
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Why is it that virtually all new languages in the last 25 years or so have a C-like syntax?
- Java wanted to sort-of knock off C++.
- C# wanted to be Java but on Microsoft's proprietary stack instead of SUN's (now Oracle's).
- Several other languages such as Vala, Scala, Swift, etc. do only careful evolution, seemingly so as to not alienate the devs used to previous C-like languages.
- Not to speak of everyone's favourite enemy, JavaScript…
- Then there is ReasonML which is basically an alternate, more C-like, syntax for OCaml, and is then compiled to JavaScript.
Now we're slowly arriving at the meat of this rant: back when I started university, the first semester programming lecture used Scheme, and provided a fine introduction to (functional) programming. Scheme, like other variants of Lisp, is a fine language, very flexible, code is data, data is code, but you get somewhat lost in a sea of parentheses, probably worse than the C-like languages' salad of curly braces. But it was a refreshing change from the likes of C, C++, and Java in terms of approach.
But the real enlightenment came when I read through Okasaki's paper on purely functional data structures. The author uses Standard ML in the paper, and after the initial shock (because it's different than most everything else I had seen), and getting used to the notation, I loved the crisp clarity it brings with almost no ceremony at all!
After looking around a bit, I found that nobody seems to use SML anymore, but there are viable alternatives, depending on your taste:
- Pragmatic programmers can use OCaml, which has immutability by default, and tries to guide the programmer to a functional programming mindset, but can accommodate imperative constructs easily when necessary.
- F# was born as OCaml on .NET but has now evolved into its own great thing with many upsides and very few downsides; I recommend every C# developer should give it a try.
- Somewhat more extreme is Haskell, with its ideology of pure functions and lazy evaluation that makes introducing side effects, I/O, and other imperative constructs rather a pain in the arse, and not quite my piece of cake, but learning it can still help you be a better programmer in whatever language you use on a day-to-day basis.
Anyway, the point is that after working with several of these languages developed out of the original Meta Language, it baffles me how anyone can be happy being a curly-braces-language developer without craving something more succinct and to-the-point. Especially when it comes to JavaScript: all the above mentioned ML-like languages can be compiled to JavaScript, so developing directly in JavaScript should hardly be a necessity.
Obviously these curly-braces languages will still be needed for a long time coming, legacy systems and all—just look at COBOL—, but my point stands.7 -
I read the pragmatic programmer a few months ago. The book advised learning a different programming language every month or so. I was doing Advent of Code so I decided to try out Elm because functional programming is all the rage these days.
It took me one hour to convert a string of numbers to an array of numbers! And when I finally finished with that I couldn't understand how to compare each element with the next one in an array using map or filter.
I realised that I've become too comfortable using javascript. Worst case scenario: In a few years when javascript is obsolete I'll be like those old dudes that know only Cobol. Best case scenario: I'll always be too dumb to earn a nice salary.
On a positive note: The first time I tried Elm I didn't understand jack shit, now I understood a few things.5 -
Software engineering doesn't evolving the way you think of it.
There are no new big patterns. There are no new big concepts and ideas to bring that evolution to us. Rob Pike thinks that the concepts he used twenty years ago are the best possible way of implementing everything and he creates Golang.
The evolution of software engineering, and maybe the whole evolution as a concept is a tick-tock. Software engineering had its latest tick at nineties, when the concepts we call modern were developed. And the latest tock was the rise of the internet, and it given the single-computer-centered Von Neumann architecture really hard challenges. I mean ticks are theoretical inventions and patterns and ideas and etc, while tock is more of some practical, business-oriented implementations.
PHP is still in use. We have troubles with scaling and deployment. Banking systems still run old Java, Windows XP and even COBOL. We had persistence really, really long time ago, and now frontenders reinvent it and call it 'immutability'!
We had our tick many, many years ago. It's time for tock. With not only scientific but commercial use of things such as Clojure, CRDTs and maybe Rust lang, we are heading straight to our new big tock, which'll bring us new great problems to solve.
That's how any evolution goes. -
There are a couple:
A system that updates user accounts to connect them into our wifi system by parsing thousands of processing files written in Clojure. The project was short lived and mainly experimental, It has complete test cases and the jar generated from it is still purring silently on the main application. It was used to replace an $85k vendor application that made no fucking sense. The code has not been touched in 2 years and the jar is still there. The dba mentioned the solution to the vendor, the vendor tried buying it from me, but being that it belongs to the institution nothing was touched, still, it got the VP's attention that I can make programs that would be bought for that level, it caught his attention even more when I showed him the codebase and he recognized a Lisp variant (he is old, and was back in the day a Fortran and Cobol developer)
A small Python categorical ML program that determines certain attributes of user generated data and effectively places them on the proper categories on the main DB. The program generates estimates of the users and the predictions have a 95% correctness rate. The DBA still needs to double check the generated results before doing the db updates. I don't remember how I coded it because I was mostly drunk when I experiment on the scenario. It also got the attention of the VP and director since the web tech manager was apparently doing crazy ML shit that they were not expecting me to do, it made them paranoid that I would eventually leave for a ML role somewhere, still here, but I want more moneys!!
A program that generates PDF documentation from user data, written in Go, Python and Perl (yes Perl) I even got shit from the lead developer since I used languages outside of their current scope of work. Dude had no option but to follow along with it :P since I am his boss
Many more. I am normally proud of my work code. But my biggest moment is my current ntural language processing unit that I am trying to code for my home, but I don't have enough power to build it with my computers, currently, my AI is too stupid, but sometimes it does reply back to my commands and does the things I ask it to do (simple things, opening a browser, search for a song etc) but 7 times out of ten it wont work :P -
I want to rant about tech YouTubers. As one myself, I feel like I do an even exchange with my viewers.
I want your attention, I don't feel like I deserve it, so I teach you something coding related. You get something of value, I get your attention.
But that's not the case with most in this space. Idiots feel like they can spout whatever bullshit they think about.
They're all stupid with their stupid fucking titles and ideas. Let's review some.
Video Title: How much Javascript you should know to get in tech??
Anyone with > 2 braincells: WTF !!!!!
Video Title: How would I start over to learn coding if I could?
My Reaction: Nope, I wouldn't. The things that I did and didn't is exactly what my journey is and I would do it all over again.
And I get the intent, you're trying to put a roadmap for beginners but they're not going to follow exactly how you lay it out. And why are you trying to establish that there is a correct way of learning coding? Everyone learns at different paces at different times. It's a journey not a race.
Video Title: A day in the life of {COMPANY} engineer.
My Reaction: What do you want to show everyone? Your fancy office? Your perks? The job perks which 99% of other devs won't have?
Video Title: How to crack FAANG interviews.
My Reaction: Well, only the top 1% is going to get an interview anyway. You're not acknowledging the fact that the acceptance rate is < 1% in these companies. Creating a video like this creates false expectations in beginner's heads. And they only see these companies as their only shots of making careers. They dont consider startups or starting their own companies.
Video Title: Top 4 dying programming languages.
My Reaction: WTF !!! COBOL was invented in 1959 and there still is demand for it. And my blood started boiling when Tiff in Tech said PHP is a dying language. Like seriously????
Video Title: Top paying programming languages in 2023.
My Reaction: Please, come on. We know it's Java. And 99% of the viewers ain't getting that job. You're just wasting time listing out languages. By the time someone starts from scratch and gets to a position of getting a job, something else will be the new fad.
Video Title: What advice would I give myself when I was starting?
My Reaction: Really? You couldn't think about saying what advice you'd give to your viewers? Are you really that full of narcissism?
There are good techies though, it's just that I get angrier and angrier the more YouTube recommends me these stupid videos. Ah, my chest feels lighter now.6 -
"What language should I learn?" Wellll.
[0]
43 PERCENT Of banking systems are built on COBOL
80 PERCENT Of in-person transactions use COBOL
95 PERCENT Of ATM swipes rely on COBOL code
220 BILLION Lines of COBOL in use today
"Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than $100 an hour when they get called in to patch up glitches, rewrite coding manuals or make new systems work with old." [1]
Found this pretty interesting/crazy.
Source:
[0] http://tmsnrt.rs/2nMf18G
[1] http://reuters.com/article/...6 -
I absolutely love it when C# programmers who never learnt any language outside of their bubble discover C# is not the most feature up-to-date programming language. I am honestly annoyed by people who can read Java syntax but can't read ML syntax (because it is too 'clever' to be used in production). What a bunch of mediocre COBOL programmers!4
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Sooo cobol eeeh...?
Old legacy system still running ehh?
Eyes closed and hope for the best from management eh?
And now everybody needs them all, while simple ppl dont get their money managers just say sorry ?
Twas a timebomb and it will still be. Its hugely pathetic of those responsible to disregard their old systems and dont test them for the worst case.
Why am i trying here to deliver proper working systems with long term update schedules when ppl in charge suck with their responsibilities?3 -
A: [technology] really sucks. For example, it does this thing where [shitty thing].
B: So just because [shitty thing], you throw out the entire [technology]?
No you dimwit. It's because of all the other things that led up to this point. This new bullshit is just being tossed on top of the mountain of other bullshit.
I'm not going to list off all 5000 reason why Cobol-interpreter-using-C-preprocessor is absolute garbage when "it's cobol implemented in the C preprocessor" is what I'm ranting about *now*.
Pedantic twats.1 -
In my new job the main task of the team is to refactor 16 old java apps, when I was about to shot myself they told me I was going to another department.
Still have to deal with some old ass stuff(cobol and a few old Java apps) but it’s mainly new projects.
I guess there’s still a god above us.4 -
It is very hard to handle AIs, you need leading scientists/artists, not managers.
You can't charm your way around its behavioral problems, you can't effectively bully or pull rank on it, and can't threaten it into unemployment.
So, the entire repertoire of the typical (asshole) manager is toast.
The *only* way to handle AI is to lead by example, give unambiguous, comprehensive and very specific instructions, and be always available to guide it through complex, gray-area situations.
Thus, it is not much different than being an actual leader (to a greenhorn and anxious and overreaching junior), but also a programmer (of a raw and unforgiving language like C or COBOL).
Since your typical company mid-level asshole manager won't do those things for dear life, AI will only leverage their incompetence to heights never seen.
By ignoring feedback and misinterpreting instructions, AI will make mistakes (just like a person).
On the wake of those mistakes, AIs have a bias for falsifying evidences and hiding relevant information (just like a bad coworker), and yet are quite persuasive to the innatentive reader (just like your typical manager).
Thus, without a daft hand, AIs will only perform worse when doing the tasks that would otherwise be done by a human.
But that will take time (more than a couple quarters, at least - probably a bit longer than the average tenure of a CEO).
And in this time, the numbers look great - the over eager "aimployee" works tirelessly day and night, seven days a week, takes no breaks, holidays or vacations, asks for no benefits besides a paycheck, have fewer and fewer sick days (maintenance downtimes), always sucks up to its corporate masters and is always ready to take on even more responsibility for (relatively) little extra pay.
Thus the problem only scales up, compounded by the corporate ideal of screwing up workers for no monetary profit, and reluctance to course-correct after investing so much time and hype into this AI bubble.
Thereby, AI is evolving into the corporate super bug that shall erode the already crumbling, stuck-in-the-past "boss mentality" institutions into oblivion.
I'm making popcorn. -
When you need to upgrade an Oracle CC&B project on a minor version change and Eclipse shows ~1500 java.lang.ClassNotFound exceptions
Bonus points: when you need to upgrade a CC&B project with thousands of COBOL lines in its extensions to CC&B 2.5
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