The April numbers are in!

lx07 · 12 May 2016

TechnoMage said:

OH, did y'all know, that the last upgrade to the Hubble Telescope, swapped out a 386 cpu, for a 486 cpu. Talk about someone being behind the curve. !

True, but that was in 1999 and we are now in 2016.

Hubble telescope gets Intel 486 upgrade

I can't remember but perhaps 17 years ago 486 CPUs were all the rage and they were pushing the boundaries. I would be surprised if they resurrected the space shuttle to deliver a new CPU next week and chose the same one.

Who knows though - they could upgrade the OS to SP3 as well while they were at it (as long as it stayed off line I guess it wouldn't impact too much on these usage stats)

Cheers :)

Vince Massi · 25 May 2016

This might explain last month´s big increase in Windows 3.1 traffic--it was income tax time in the US.

U.S. government agencies are still using Windows 3.1, floppy disks and 1970s computers | PCWorld

Berton · 25 May 2016

My first computer was in '92, an AMD 80386 at 40MHz, 4MB RAM and 120MB HDD. I was recently 'awarded' a similar computer but 1 year older, still works but the CMOS battery needs replacing, not easy to do.

msdos622wasfun · 26 May 2016

The comments beneath that article about the government using old computers were interesting. I think I mostly agree with the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" notion, but the part that had me scratching my head was when one poster said that COBOL was pretty much the same as Pascal or C. COBOL is fine I guess, but similar to Pascal or C? Not so sure about that. Unless COBOL has really advanced these past few years (I just took one class in it when I went to college in the '90s). But I guess if it can run a mainframe, you can hack it to make it do pretty much anything.

BunnyJ · 26 May 2016

msdos622wasfun said:

The comments beneath that article about the government using old computers were interesting. I think I mostly agree with the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" notion, but the part that had me scratching my head was when one poster said that COBOL was pretty much the same as Pascal or C. COBOL is fine I guess, but similar to Pascal or C? Not so sure about that. Unless COBOL has really advanced these past few years (I just took one class in it when I went to college in the '90s). But I guess if it can run a mainframe, you can hack it to make it do pretty much anything.

I used COBOL for about 20 years and it's a very good language for business use and government use as well. It can run easily on a mainframe and process tons of data fast. Fits the needs of businesses perfectly and government as well.

msdos622wasfun · 26 May 2016

BunnyJ said:

I used COBOL for about 20 years and it's a very good language for business use and government use as well. It can run easily on a mainframe and process tons of data fast. Fits the needs of businesses perfectly and government as well.

Right. Although COBOL is fine for what it does, I still thought the comparison was weird because of the nature of the syntax of these three different languages. C is used for a lot of systems programming (can get very low level) and Pascal originally a teaching tool in order to emphasize structure, so comparing to something originally invented for business use seemed odd to me. But you can get a lot done in all of those languages, considering how they've evolved.

BunnyJ · 26 May 2016

msdos622wasfun said:

Right. Although COBOL is fine for what it does, I still thought the comparison was weird because of the nature of the syntax of these three different languages. C is used for a lot of systems programming (can get very low level) and Pascal originally a teaching tool in order to emphasize structure, so comparing to something originally invented for business use seemed odd to me. But you can get a lot done in all of those languages, considering how they've evolved.

Who ever made that comparison doesn't really know what they are talking about. COBOL is an excellent tool for business and government business like activities. I loved coding it in because I could crank out a lot of code fast and it was clean and structured. I took a Pascal class in college but I never used it after that. I did use PL/I at AT&T and that was an amazing language, Again, a great language for doing just about anything but the downside was it was an IBM only language.

lx07 · 01 Jun 2016

BunnyJ said:

Who ever made that comparison doesn't really know what they are talking about. COBOL is an excellent tool for business and government business like activities. I loved coding it in because I could crank out a lot of code fast and it was clean and structured. I took a Pascal class in college but I never used it after that. I did use PL/I at AT&T and that was an amazing language, Again, a great language for doing just about anything but the downside was it was an IBM only language.

I think COBOL is funny to code in actually. It is like writing a novel - "once upon a time there were some variables, let me tell you all about them in great detail".

As it happens I am an IBM (AS400) programmer and tomorrow I have an interview. They did ask if I could program COBOL as well. I said no, not really, as it seemed a safe answer

msdos622wasfun · 01 Jun 2016

Verbose would be a good way of putting it.

lx07 · 03 Jun 2016

msdos622wasfun said:

Verbose would be a good way of putting it.

Yup. I was looking for that word in English but apparently found a more long-winded way of saying it. Perhaps I would be a good COBOL programmer after all....