Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Rob Cozens]

>Thirty years ago I wrote a proposal for using lisp for a distributed 
>control system project.


Hi Dar,

Thirty years ago I was responsible for procurement and development of 
Oakland Police Department's MIS.  While the City of Oakland DP Dept. 
was a COBOL shop, Boeing Computer Systems had just delivered OPD's 
Computer Assisted Dispatching System in FORTRAN, and the daily CAD 
activity logs were the principal input to MIS; so MIS was written in 
FORTRAN.

A year or so after I left OPD, they hired Coopers & Lybrand (sp?) to 
review the system.  Their main criticism was the selection of the 
programming language: "FORTRAN" is for scientific programming and 
COBOL is for business programming."  Of course no mention of the CAD 
system, Boeing's choice of FORTRAN, or the need for OPD to maintain 
in-house FORTRAN expertise to support CAD.

Their "analysis" also stated, "There are more COBOL programmers than 
FORTRAN programmers; so it will be easier to find programming staff." 
Real world: when I added a programmer to my staff, both candidates 
sent me by City Personnel were FORTRAN programmers recently hired by 
City DP and scheduled to be trained in COBOL.

The MIS system was used daily for over 15 years.  What "everybody 
knows" is often nada.
-- 

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm

"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."

from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)