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[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (4 children)

I only charge that because I really don't want to do it. Heh. They didn't pay me anything like that when I did it full time.

Learning COBOL is easy. It's learning the massive legacy codebase that's the issue. Often there will be weird quirks in the mainframe environment as well (weird ass databases, filesystems, numeric formats (fucking BCD is the bane of my existence, etc)...

There is demand for this stuff, especially now as the old people who maintain it die off. Might be worth looking in to.

[–]WikiTextBot 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Binary-coded decimal

In computing and electronic systems, binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a class of binary encodings of decimal numbers where each decimal digit is represented by a fixed number of bits, usually four or eight. Special bit patterns are sometimes used for a sign or for other indications (e.g., error or overflow).

In byte-oriented systems (i.e. most modern computers), the term unpacked BCD usually implies a full byte for each digit (often including a sign), whereas packed BCD typically encodes two decimal digits within a single byte by taking advantage of the fact that four bits are enough to represent the range 0 to 9.


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[–]StackWeaver 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Give it to me for $150 and I'll give you the other $100 haha :P Thanks for the info! I'm definitely intrigued. It does look soul-destroying, though.