most of the data was already input, they were mostly read off huge reals of tape

I did no data entry, I was programming

I had one class on the machine coding

I knew the rudimentary basics of coding in machine language

I never needed it for a job, never used it professinally

did it have a name

the biggest problem with cobol is you need a priming read to start the whole process

then yo ucan do normal reads with cobol and its all set

I was showing someone the basics of cobol and they completely forgot and didn't know about the priming read

thru the entire input and output off

program blew up

I had a cobol teacher talking about a special method to avoid the priming read needed for cobol, but it was overly complicated and not worth doing

its basically getting your first record/setting it to read the first record

......

the point is that cobol doesn't work without the priming read

and if you think I'm not an expert in computer info systems, yhour wrong, I am

I know what I'm talking about

he asked what a priming read is

you need a priming read to get cobol to work

I said its getting your first record and/or setting it to read the first record

I believe its actgually grabbing that first record

the loop doesn't work without doing that priminig read

I'm well aware of how programming works

I'm not here to play 20 questions about my knowledge of programming

I've been retired for many years

you can think what you want, I already proved it

I told you I was retired

no matter what I answred you would still think I didn't know

not if you answered it correctly

I could pull out my cobol manual and quote you pages out of it, you wouldn't believe I own books

I answered the priming question correctly

you still don't beleive it

yea, I kept all my old college books

yea, that isn't going to happen

I don't take and share pics off my cellphone

huge hassle to figure out how to do it for starters

I'd have to upload the image

its ah uge fricking pain

I have a phone

*looks at the plus sign next to the text box*

you didnt answer it correctly, it was rather vague if not wrong