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Peter Dow (ML) wrote:
I used one of those timeshares for awhile, but none of them give you that hands on experience, doing saves to a real tape drive, replacing disk drives concurrently, installing the OS in the 1st place, upgrading it, applying PTFs, etc.However, not having to pay for software support in order to stay on the latest version with all the goodies is a definite plus.
I have a model 170 at home. Before it, I had a couple model 400s. After owning systems for 6 years, I've probably totalled some 12 hours of "hands-on" experience (plus 3-4 hours of physical memory upgrades and DASD replacement).
Now, even though various upgrades, etc., added up to much more than 12 hours of clock-time, the vast majority of it was taken up by waiting by doing something else. Every half-hour or whatever, I'd swap a CD and type <g> or whatever the character was.
My wife uses a PC much of the day, but she has zero practical "hands-on" experience. That is, if I told her to open the /download directory on her D: drive, she wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do.
I guess my point is that it really isn't that big a part of it all. The _concepts_ of how CL commands work and how IBM organizes menus and the importance of <F1> and <F4>, and all the little goodies such as joblogs and job descriptions, etc., etc., are far more important than how to do a restore from tape.
Besides, the smaller percentage who actually _need_ direct hands-on experience, well, they _can_ pick up pretty inexpensive boxes via eBay or wherever. Many can simply put some time in next to the hardware at work. Even if separation of duties interferes, being an observer can be possible.
I'm rambling in thought because I don't really know how important or meaningful "hands-on" is. The positions that I've held have almost always been unique within the departments; i.e., I would be the _only_ one writing startup programs or running upgrades, etc. No other developer particularly cared. That's a bit different in my current position, but this job isn't like any before either.
Tom Liotta
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