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Comment Re:at least three lies (Score 1) 33

Sure. If you completely ignore the context that it is only intended for automated crawlers and misread it as referring to everyone then, yes, I agree that would be ridiculous...

(It's also kind of ridiculous in these days to have an essentially-voluntary anti-bot system and expect it to do anything, but that's another topic.)

Comment Re: Frightening because (Score 0) 26

As a free speech absolutist myself, I don't care if people are so stupid that they believe everything they're being told. The only problem I have is there are people believe the lies and vote.

See my signature for more info. Democracy is the collective stupidity of all of us, telling the rest of us how we ought to be ruled. -

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 96

COBOL is easy.

Easy to learn
Easy to program with
Easy to read.

It is very simple. Which is both a strength and its biggest weakness.

The problem is that programs written are NOT structured except the way the guy who wrote the code thought it should be ... if he even thought about it at all.

I was once upon a time hired to convert a COBOL programmed system into an SQL database. The example I use is there was this one proceedure done in COBOL ( take data, modify it this way, output accordingly), literally the same process, but it wasn't a procedure it was coded three different ways. The inputs and outputs should have been the same, they were .... most of the time. And that is why there was this other bit of code checking outputs over there ---->

Also written different ways.

Diarrhea code. They never did get it migrated. The guys who wrote it died and the system died with him. The real fix would have been to have a clean room implementation with three teams, the COBOL team, the API team and the SQL team. But it was a mom and pop shop, and didn't have the funds available which is why the system died when the last of the COBOL coders died.

Comment Re:Wait... (Score 5, Funny) 96

Two economists were walking down the street when they saw dog poop on the sidewalk.

The first economist said to the second, "I'll pay you $100 to eat a spoonful of that dog poop."

The second economist figured it was an easy $100, so ate a spoonful of poop. Then he said to the first, "I'll pay you $100 to eat a spoonful."

The first economist ate a spoonful and collected his $100.

As they walked further down the street, the second economist said to the first, "We both ate dog poop for nothing."

The first economist replied, "Not true. We just added $200 to the GDP."

Comment Re:Why? (Score 3, Insightful) 96

Is Cobol specifically more difficult to debug?

Yes. Much Cobol code was written before structured programming was standard. There are no unit tests. There are no classes to encapsulate complexity.

Is there really a deficit in Cobol literate programmers?

No, not really. A programmer can learn Cobol well enough to get work done in about a week. The problem isn't "learning the language", but learning about the legacy application you need to maintain. For instance, why is a discount applied to every invoice for customer #478324? Well, because he was the CEO's college roommate, but you won't learn that from the manual.

Isn't Cobol actually spelled COBOL?

Only if you want to be pedantic.

I don't buy the implicit implication that because it's old it's not as good as new

There's been a lot of progress in programming languages in the last 60 years.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it ...

It is broke.

Comment Re:Let's not forget (Score 1) 130

In the rest of the world, including places like Iran and Indonesia, Jews live just fine as standard members of society with minimal to no friction. Only in Israel do they believe that everyone else must be exterminated for them to live freely, it's a sick, sick society.

Your sig definitely applies to yourself with this post. Strong ignorance distorts your judgement.

Israel isn't trying to eliminate all Muslims. They aren't even trying to remove Muslims from their own army.

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