Tag Archives: assembler

Legacy Modernisation: A Hidden Menace!

After much deliberation, agonising over strategy, considering the views from diametrically opposed technicians, you have finally decided to proceed with a Legacy Modernisation project. Your business case makes it a no-brainer. Millions saved in licensing costs in year one alone. Your old COBOL applications, a mixture of time-consuming batch and archaic CICS screens, will be […]

Happy Birthday Dear COBOL: Part One

COBOL celebrates its 60th birthday in 2019. This is the first in a three part blog looking at the cultural and technological changes that it has endured within its lifetime. Happy birthday dear COBOL, happy birthday to you! Those of you who follow such events, and those of you who may have seen snippets on […]

The History Of (My) Coding – Part 11 Elvis To The End

My legacy modernisation company had started well, but not without some sizeable bumps in the road. It was time for some consolidation… By mid 2015 the Proof Of Concept had drifted towards an unsatisfactory though predictable conclusion, but I was getting several leads from Microfocus. These were all COBOL users that had no idea how […]

The History Of (My) Coding – Part 8 Pirates And Pupils

After eleven years as a freelancer I was given the option to take a permanent role at a place I knew well… In truth it was not a difficult decision. The COBOL gravy train was showing signs of being derailed, and IR35 was a threat to the contract profession everywhere. I went to the pub […]

The History Of (My) Coding – Part 5 Fantasy Cricket And Cowboys

After years of familiarity it can be a big step out into the unknown swimming with the sharks, but I needn’t have worried. The big wide world of contracting was not exactly a showcase for excellence… I marketed myself as a senior analyst programmer, with skills in COBOL, CICS, VSAM, Supra, and if push came […]

The History Of (My) Coding – Part 4 Fashion And Freelancers

  Eleven years is a long time to be in the same job. Could I perform as part of a team? Would my coding skills be up to scratch? And what was the beer like in Manchester? The last few weeks of my time at the brewery should have been a period of handover, but […]

The History Of (My) Coding – Part 3 COBOL, Cricket and a Copper

A few years into my IT career I ditched Assembler for COBOL and hoped that I would never have to go back… COBOL was a revelation. It was horse drawn carriage to motor car, Betamax to VHS, black and white to colour. After the relatively slow and long-winded Assembler, I could churn out COBOL code […]

The History Of (My) Coding – Part 2 The Punk Programmer

My forty year career in IT blossomed in the late 1970s as I learned a valuable lesson about continuous stationery and undertook my first legacy modernisation project… The seventies were drawing to a close and technology was moving at pace. Actually, if you compare it to technological developments today it wasn’t really moving that quickly. […]

The History Of (My) Coding – Part 1 Cards And Catastrophes

Legacy IT Logo

2018 sees the fortieth anniversary of my first job. It was in IT – and I never left! To ‘celebrate’ I have delved into my mental history books to illustrate the forty year journey… I was quite bright as a child. Bright enough to be advanced a whole year which meant that I attended grammar […]