Re: Re: What is UNIX? (was: H
By: Bob Worm to MRO on Wed Oct 15 2025 10:29 am

Re: Re: What is UNIX? (was: H
By: MRO to Bob Worm on Tue Oct 14 2025 20:38:52

Hi, MRO.

I've been using grep for decades.

Unfortunately, it turns out the 90s were quite a long time ago. So I
suppose me, too.

what?? *throws his walker*
it seems just like yesterday
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Bob Worm wrote to deon <=-

We are so spoiled with modern computer performance that I don't think I can remember a single time when I've sat there thinking "I wish this
grep would hurry up".

I'm still amazed at how well the old iron held up. I ran DNS and mail
on a Sparc5 for 100 people, had a small SMB share, and it held up quite
well - that was, until our parent company sent an email to all that
included a virus definition update to a system we weren't using.

Suddenly my T1 circuit felt inadqeuate.



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yeah my hubby is an RPG developer on an iSeries midrange for one of the coasinos here. he also codes in COBOL when necessary.

... There will be a rain dance Friday night, weather permitting!

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On 05 Oct 2025, phigan said the following...

Re: What is UNIX? (was: Hot T
By: Dumas Walker to FUSION on Fri Oct 03 2025 10:17 am

I was a professional user of z/OS until recently. ;) I used several

What's that run on?

Ibm IBM Z-Series mainframes like the IBM Z/16 Enterprise.

... Electricity is really just organized lightning.

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Re: Re: What is UNIX? (was: H
By: Warp 4 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Oct 20 2025 12:54 pm

yeah my hubby is an RPG developer on an iSeries midrange for one of the coasinos here. he also codes in COBOL when necessary.

Interesting! My first job out of college was for a mail order/brick and mortar retailer. After coding in school in C and Lisp, COBOL and RPG/4 (which all of their systems were written in) seemed backwards. It works, and I'm sure more than we know is running old legacy, "uncool" code.

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On 2025-10-20, Warp 4 <KLYNTAR!Warp.4@vert.synchro.net> wrote:

On 05 Oct 2025, phigan said the following...

Re: What is UNIX? (was: Hot T
By: Dumas Walker to FUSION on Fri Oct 03 2025 10:17 am

I was a professional user of z/OS until recently. ;) I used several

What's that run on?

Ibm IBM Z-Series mainframes like the IBM Z/16 Enterprise.

... Electricity is really just organized lightning.

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Damn, I'd love to start with as/400, because I can't grasp the
concept of objects and libraries and the like. It's like a
weird VMS/NT to the extreme. Yes, I'm learning Cobol because
of an $JOB. For the rest I can just use GCobol for prototyping
and perfectly fine under my OpenBSD netbook; but in order
to get employed I truly need at least to know the basics of
AS/400.

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anthk wrote to Warp 4 <=-

Damn, I'd love to start with as/400, because I can't grasp the
concept of objects and libraries and the like. It's like a
weird VMS/NT to the extreme. Yes, I'm learning Cobol because
of an $JOB. For the rest I can just use GCobol for prototyping
and perfectly fine under my OpenBSD netbook; but in order
to get employed I truly need at least to know the basics of
AS/400.

Good Luck learning Cobol. I haven't touch that since college. In
a wierd way, I wish I still had my textbooks on it. Hell I wish
I still had my old books on Pascal. I've been thinking about
relearning that just fun.



... Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
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Re: Re: What is UNIX? (was: H
By: nblade to anthk on Wed Jan 14 2026 08:21:00

I wish I still had my textbooks on it. Hell I wish I still had my old books on Pascal.

Check out Archive.org. Lots of old books there.

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nblade wrote to anthk <=-

Good Luck learning Cobol. I haven't touch that since college. In
a wierd way, I wish I still had my textbooks on it. Hell I wish
I still had my old books on Pascal. I've been thinking about
relearning that just fun.

Thriftbooks.com is a great place for old (and new) texts. I just picked
up Numerical Recipes in Pascal out of a sense of nostalgia, was
debating about playing around with Turbo Pascal again.



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Re: Re: What is UNIX? (was: H
By: anthk to Warp 4 on Tue Jan 13 2026 04:40:22

Damn, I'd love to start with as/400, because I can't grasp the
concept of objects and libraries and the like. It's like a
weird VMS/NT to the extreme. Yes, I'm learning Cobol because
of an $JOB. For the rest I can just use GCobol for prototyping
and perfectly fine under my OpenBSD netbook; but in order
to get employed I truly need at least to know the basics of
AS/400.

Libraries are more like... a tag for other objects? Not really a
folder, but works as such to some extent. I was taught AS/400 is
a big database, so that sounds the closest. Every object can be
assigned to only one library, libraries can't contain others
(with an exception of QSYS, which is a "master library").
So, a folder, but not really a folder. In FTP it's "translated"
to a directory so it's more acceptable for PCs.

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Neko wrote to anthk <=-

Libraries are more like... a tag for other objects? Not really a
folder, but works as such to some extent. I was taught AS/400 is
a big database, so that sounds the closest. Every object can be
assigned to only one library, libraries can't contain others
(with an exception of QSYS, which is a "master library").
So, a folder, but not really a folder.

There were some interesting data architectures out there in the 80s and
90s. my first job was programming and administering a PICK system, and
it took a while to get my head around it. The file system was the
database, and each field could be a list of other fields. A database
query language and BASIC were included in the OS.

You'd see the same sku record in a purchase order reflected as a value
in an inventory record, which was reflected in a sales record and in
the general ledger.

It's all well and good until you have a hardware or write error. They
called them GFEs, group format errors. Or, as we called them, Gone For
Ever.

We lost power and backup in the earthquake of 1989 and rebuilding was
pain in the ass. We basically had to restore the entire system from the
night before and lose a days' worth of records which we had to manually
enter.






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Re: Re: What is UNIX? (was: H
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Neko on Fri Jan 16 2026 08:16 am

There were some interesting data architectures out there in the 80s and
90s. my first job was programming and administering a PICK system, and
it took a while to get my head around it. The file system was the
database, and each field could be a list of other fields. A database
query language and BASIC were included in the OS.

A friend/bandmate/mentor/co-sysop of mine worked at General Automation (GA) in the late 80s where the target OS was PICK and the development environment was UNIX (of some kind). He was writing boot firmware (the "executive") for a 68040 based system that never shipped, I guess.
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