Re: CoBOL moved to OO

From: Howard Brazee (howard_at_brazee.net)
Date: 01/02/04 

Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 15:57:14 GMT

On 31-Dec-2003, "Peter E.C. Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote:

> Believe it or not, but there IS a world where Payroll DOESN'T blow. It just
> goes on, week after week, month after month, year after year, doing
> precisely what it is specified to do. Never fails, never chokes, all its
> component parts passing information and processing it, exactly as they were
> designed to do, with NOBODY doing any messing with it. (Maybe some
> re-configuration for new tax tables, or deductions, carried out by users who
> understand Payroll, even if they don't have indepth knowledge of hexadecimal
> or computer programming.)
>
> Has it ever occurred to you that one of the reasons systems need "ongoing
> maintenance" is because the system has received "ongoing maintenance"
> throughout its lifetime from a variety of programmers who were told to "Fix
> it, NOW!!"?

The primary reason the Payroll Program needs ongoing maintenance is because
business rules change. Think of anything to do with the Tax Code.