[MUD-Dev] Java and Javascript

[Jon A. Lambert]

Warning the following is mostly noise, but I do mention mud once.
My apologies.

On 25 Feb 98 at 22:30, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> On 09:45 PM 2/25/98 +0000, I personally witnessed Jon A. Lambert
> jumping up to say:
> >Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> >> Let's do a MUD in CICS! :)
> >> 
> >> Sorry, I get nostalgic for obsolete protocols.
> >>
> >
> >FWIW, IBM's 3270 communication is the functional equivalent of Unix's 
> >curses or ncurses.  3270 is far from obsolete, I wish it were, but 
> >it does pay handsomely these days. ;)
> 
> Well, CICS has other problems, but you're right. And those of us who
> know COBOL will never be unemployed... too many banks rely on it
> every day... ever wonder what's behind the VT on your local ATMs? ;)
>

I spent 4 years in the banking industry and wrote and maintained a 
lot of this Cobol spaghetti code that runs as the backbone to many 
of the ATM networks.  Well that's quite an exageration. ;)  Me and 
several thousand other nameless faces were involved.  Typically you
open up a COBOL source file to maintain, find it was created circa 
1970-ish, and 50 different hands have touched and mangled it all with
their own unique style of coding.  Generally speaking, it makes most 
mud code look well-written. :)

I just got back into the banking industry about 2 months ago and 
wasn't really suprised to find out that tellers are still using 
4700 terminals (24x40 character resolution!) attached to CICS running 
370 assembler applications.  Of course I did my best to disavow any 
knowledge in this area and have landed a long-term contract on a 
Web-based online banking project, which should be a lot of fun 
although we will have to interface with many of these 'legacy' apps.  
Maybe 'legacy' isn't a strong enough term; 'antediluvian' is more 
appropriate.

> >At least one person on this list has admitted to having a traumatic
> >childhood experience with a rainbow.  Perhaps their are others who
> >would wish to share?  :P 
> 
> I had a traumatic childhood experience with a DEC PDP-10 hooked up
> to an IBM mechanical paper tape reader. Seems the beast didn't want
> to work like a normal machine where you turn it on and off it goes,
> you had to toggle the boot code on the front panel switches and feed
> long rolls of adding machine tape through the reader, which was a
> serious pain in the ass. It was so traumatic, I became obsessed with
> conquering the damn thing, and unfortunately technology moved faster
> than I could... so I'm still trying, except instead of a PDP-10 it's
> a Pentium II, and instead of TOPS I'm messing around trying to get
> on top of NT and beat it into submission. It's tragic, isn't it?
> Sometimes childhood trauma has a way of consuming your life...
> 

Never had any experience with paper tape <sheesh>.  One of my first 
jobs was running a card translator machine (IBM 1204, I believe).  
You ran the punched cards through this 5 x 5 x 5 foot metal cube that 
would magically translate the the holes into Names, addresses, etc.
You programmed it by plugging wires into a board to indicate which
parts of the card to use to print which character fields on the card.
It was loads of fun (heh) until the thing jammed and you literally 
had to crawl inside the thing to find the eaten card.  

This is probably why I prefer to clicking on happy colorful icons. 
I like my programs to type for me, correct my spelling and grammar.
Draw for me, play happy sounds when I do good things and sad sounds 
when I do bad things.  Yea, I even like programs that try to code and 
think for me too.  Of course they better do what I want, when I want 
to do it, or things I would have liked to do if I had thought of it 
or I don't use them.  I don't like my cards getting eaten and 
crawling around in the machine to find them.  What I'm trying to say 
is that what I really, really want (Uh) is a zig-a-zig ha.

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