My old LinkedIn profile recently has attracted more emails
about COBOL jobs, which hardly seem appropriate at age 74 after a 16-year-hiatus.
There does exist object-oriented COBOL, but I don’t know how
often it is used.
It still is remarkable to me how the “style” of computing
changed in the 1990s, with younger programmers getting used to less verbose languages
where they could type commands quickly online (like Mark Zuckerberg, as played
by Jesse Eisenberg, does in his dorm room while drunk when inventing
Facebook). “Kid’s stuff”. Older programmers, who had matured in the days
of punched cards and daily turnarounds, had trouble fitting in to a culture
that was much more piecemeal. Yet, that
sort of slow-paced maturity was badly missing when the nation designed and implemented
Obamacare.
There is one more thing to ponder. When you get laid off from a job (as I did on
December 13, 2001 after three decades with no layoff) you suddenly lose access
to all your work. As an independent
blogger, there is no way that can happen – unless it is taken away force,
either criminal or foreign enemy, or by government.
Picture: Not where I was laid off, but I worked there in
1989.
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