Episode 70: COBOL and Mainframes

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Intro

Game Theory + Reinforcement Learning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwlteKFyiHU

News/Links

• Free book: Annotated Algorithms in Python 
• https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6e0m7p/full_free_book_annotated_algorithms_in_python/
• Interactive Bloom Filter 
• https://www.jasondavies.com/bloomfilter/
• Oh My Zsh 
• https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh
• Curta Calculator 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

Book of the Show

• Jason: A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age 
• http://amzn.to/2x0zUS0
• Patrick: A Fire Upon the Deep 
• http://amzn.to/2x0o67m

Tool of the Show

• Jason: WebTorrent 
• https://webtorrent.io/
• Patrick: Korg Gadget 
• http://www.korg.com/us/products/software/korg_gadget/

COBOL and Mainframe Computing

• History of COBOL
• Sponsored by the Department of Defense & Companies
• GE, Phillips, IBM
• Most popular language worldwide by 1970
• Over 60% of organizations still use COBOL as of 2012
• Used for back-end financial services and mainframes
• The Y2K Problem
• Basic Features
• Procedural
• Compiled
• Statically Typed for objects, duck typed for primitives
• Unique Features
• Picture clauses
• Similar to sprintf but stateful
• Current State
• COBOL 2014
• A majority of software managers said they are moving off COBOL or would if it was cheaper
• Mainframes & Batch Processing
• Submit jobs, wait in queue for results
• Initially punch cards handed to a human
• A massive machine with total data locality