Why NASA Needs A Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old Languages

[6Foot2]

Link: Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old Languages

 

...Yes, it's going to require coding, but it won't be in Ruby on Rails or Python. Not C or C++. Go a little further back, to the assembly languages used in early computing. Know Cobol? Can you breeze throught Fortran? Remember your Algol? Those fancy new languages from the late 1950s? Then you might be the person for the job.

 

"It was state of the art in 1975, but that's basically 40 years old if you want to think of it that way," Suzanne Dodd, program manager for the Voyager program, said in a phone interview. "Although, some people can program an assembly language and understand the intricacy of the spacecraft, most younger people can't or really don't want to...

[mjs_mjs]

It's amazing that those machines can go so far on so little (RAM). Respect to those early coders.

[3s-gtech]

We were still doing Fortran coding in my first year of uni, 14 years ago. Not that I remember any of it, and my program (a variant on the Game of Life) acted more like a virus than humans. Don't hire me NASA, or we'll get the plot of the Star Trek film...

[CAM]

Hmm, I actually know a COBOL programmer! They might find this interesting...

[Oaktech]

I'm a little rusty, but I was a pretty good assembly language programmer at uni... I'm sure I could pick it up again for the right incentive!