On 10/18/2013 9:49 AM, Buck Calabro wrote:
It seems to me that the larger question is: Are we up to snuff?
Before this turns into a rant against old programmers, I'd like to add
something.
I'm an old programmer. In both senses. There aren't many people here
who started in this business before I did. I punched some cards,
spliced some tapes, matched some records and made hundreds and hundreds
of julienne fries... (geezer points and condolences for those who get
that last reference). My formal education ends with high school - I had
to go to work, so I didn't go to university. My first job was as a
computer operator, and my qualifications were: Had my own car, could
lift full boxes of paper.
35 years later, I don't have many more qualifications than I did then.
No formal education, not even any Certificates of Completion. Like so
many others, I'm self taught when it comes to programming. I worked in
small businesses all my life. Went to COMMON once, and a Technical
conference once and made it to New England for a user conference once.
I figure that I know so little that I could honestly teach a new person
20% of what I know in two weeks. The other 20% is stuff I forget about
until I am in that weird place where knowing the difference between
MHLZO and MLLZO is the thing that saves me hours in the debugger.
I'm not Alan, Scott, Henrik or Mihael but I can slog my way through
writing new RPG wrappers for the odd Java POI class, put it into a
service program and consume it in a regular RPG program that's
scribbling a web page. If I can do that, anyone can.
Anyway, the key point in 'Are we up to snuff?' isn't to denigrate
anyone. We all of us have the ability to do this stuff. I've never
taken calculus, but I'm pretty sure I've never had to do any rocket
science in the course of my business programming. I've had to do a lot
of 'read this, mush it around so it can be accumulated and make some
reports about it'. In 1978, I was reading cards. In 1988 I was reading
DISK40 (and those magnetic domains are really only for young eyes,
believe you me). In 1998 I was reading DISK and in 2008 I was reading
TCP/IP sockets. In 2013 I'm reading XML.
It's a little more of a change than going from MFCU to DISK40 to DISK,
but not a whole lot. And if I can do that, honestly, anyone can.
There's an old joke (I only know like, two) that goes: 'How many
psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?'
'One. But the light bulb really, really has to want to change.'
--buck
still matching records after all these years...
midrange.com
