[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>>>                                 
   Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  from 5x16 to   
   >>>> 7x24 operations etc..   
   >>>   
   >>> Certainly don't get this.  Every place I ever saw COBOL was 24/7 and   
   >>> that is going back to at least 1972.   
   >>   
   >> I would be surprised if you have never experienced a financial   
   >> institution operating with a "transaction will be completed   
   >> next day" model.   
   >   
   >I get that now.  That has nothing to do with IT and everything to do   
   >with people and their being more "legacy" than the IS.  I am finally   
   >starting to see change. My last automatic payment from DFAS wasn't   
   >really due until a Monday, but the funds showed up on a Saturday.   
   >Even things that once ran only nightly as "batch" are now processed   
   >almost immediately.  But the people still only work 8 hours a day 5   
   >days a week and it is them that cause the apparent lag in most IT   
   >processing.  Used to be systems went offline for 6-8 hours for backups.   
   >Today if they go offline at all it is for seconds to minutes.  But, none   
   >of this was ever related to the language an IS was written in and   
   >rewriting it in JAVA/C++/Go/C# is not going to improve anything.   
      
   This I agree with, but would add that often these sorts of   
   delays are also the byproduct of arcane and outdated regulatory   
   or business reasons.  For examples, banks used to close at what   
   felt like ridiculously early hours: 1pm to 3pm or something like   
   that.  The reason was that this gave the clerks time to balance   
   their ledgers to reflect the day's transactions before the end   
   of "normal" working hours.  So while the bank closed for   
   ordinary customer services, it remained open for its own   
   business for some number of hours.   
      
   	- Dan C.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)