I have very good memories of stacking up my (Fortran) cards in the hopper on our department's IBM Model 30-8 (as in 8K of core memory, as in wires rapped around magnets). The world was my oyster, although the oyster (in this case, Veldman's Hierarchical Profile Grouping Analysis) had to written into a few subroutines in order to fit in memory. <s> Programming is programming. Anyway, RPG IV has changed the whole game, now including sql queries, and regular text editing without needing to worry about columns. That could be a hoot: give up VFP and .Net, learn RPG, and become highly employable: who would've ever thought ...

Hank

>>Last night I met somebody who works for a bank system provider that now accounts for approx 70% of the world's bank systems. It has been popular to say that most banks use COBOL but in fact they use RPG that dates back to the 1960s and offers loop constructs designed for punched-card programs. You'll struggle to find vendor-anointed gurus in contemporary circles who would agree that RPG is a useful player in 2011, but that doesn't stop the banks or highly-incentivized employees who understand all the arguments about technology and latest tools etc but also understand fully why maintaining existing investment makes sense if you can do it. Some can't do it, and that's a shame. Others can do it, and some of them wonder why the other camp is proud of serial wastage of human time and investment. In contemporary systems this seems to be dividing into a proprietary VS open source behavior pattern, with the open source ants increasing scathing about the proprietary grasshoppers.
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>I really get the idea of maintaining existing systems - especially in areas like banking and accounting where there are hardly points given for innovation and creativity <s> There would, of course, be a great fear of the consequences of breaking something, for openers.
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>But frankly, what would concern me more, would be the psychological profiles of those I would have to hire to maintain these systems. There must be among that crowd who find it stimulating to maintain systems designed for punch cards some very strange people who would include at least one guy a couple twitches away from putting a gun in his mouth or going up in a tower with a rifle. The thought that he might decide to go out in a blaze of glory taking the whole international banking system down with him would keep me up at night <bg>