COBOL on Wheelchair • Hacker News Board

Re: COBOL on Wheelchair

#41

Post by memracom » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 9:13 PM UTC

Nimi wrote: post #40

I have to wonder: there are very competent "old technology/mainframe" programmers. They debugged complex programs using very primitive tools when we were all in diapers. Obviously, there are also very mediocre old programmers, but for the sake of this discussion, consider the best practitioners of their generation. How is it that they mostly find themselves stuck in horrible jobs, maintaining legacy software on their…

Lots of these guys learned new languages like C aeons ago and have since moved to Java, Scala, Python, etc. The folks who are stuck maintaining legacy COBOL apps are there because they want to be there. The very competent people quickly learn how to use new tools, but can still deep dive and find bugs related to memory leaks and race conditions when it is needed. At the same time, these old guys are likely to demand that everyone around them use TDD so that they don't introduce that kind of bug in the first place. Case in point, Uncle Bob.

Re: COBOL on Wheelchair

#42

Post by andrewdutton » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 4:56 AM UTC

aaronem wrote: post #29

malandrew wrote: post #11

I'm usually not one to get offended and and I'm not going to say the author is horrible person like some jerks around here that get offended by non-PC stuff, but it comes across as possibly a tad offensive to use a wheelchair as a jab at Ruby on Rails. I know it's a play on Cobol being old, but a lot of people confined to wheel chairs are young, in the prime of their life and extremely capable in other areas of their…

> it's not really my place to judge since I'm not in a wheelchair myself Yet you do a sterling job of not letting that hold you back for an instant.

I don't think it's a case of passing judgement, but of an expression of discomfort around how the source is presented.

Like some jokes from a few decades ago, there is still value (they can be/are humorous) but at the same time the re-telling of the joke today would need to be done with some tact.

Re: COBOL on Wheelchair

#43

Post by malandrew » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 6:30 AM UTC

aaronem wrote: post #29

malandrew wrote: post #11

I'm usually not one to get offended and and I'm not going to say the author is horrible person like some jerks around here that get offended by non-PC stuff, but it comes across as possibly a tad offensive to use a wheelchair as a jab at Ruby on Rails. I know it's a play on Cobol being old, but a lot of people confined to wheel chairs are young, in the prime of their life and extremely capable in other areas of their…

> it's not really my place to judge since I'm not in a wheelchair myself Yet you do a sterling job of not letting that hold you back for an instant.

It is possible to perceive something as likely to offend many without being offended yourself. I'm neither judging, nor offended, but simply stating that the choice of diction here is likely to be hurtful to others. It is not necessarily judgement to speculate on likely outcomes from actions and words.

That being said it is my place to judge you as a pedantic troll that lowers the quality of the discourse here. Furthermore, it is the place of everyone else to judge this comment of mine as one deserving of downvotes since my previous sentence makes it as useless to everyone here as your statement.