Fw: [AACP] Y2K Survey
I thought this tidbit was interesting.
Lucius L. Hilley III
lhilley at cdc.net
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----- Original Message -----
From: day brown <daybrown at artelco.com>
To: <aacp at onelist.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 20, 1999 7:33 AM
Subject: [AACP] Y2K Survey
> From: "day brown" <daybrown at artelco.com>
>
> Back 71, when I was taking the last of my programming courses
> at the U of SO. FLA, in Tampa, I was pretty disgusted. Of the
> 35 or so taking Comp Sci, perhaps 5 of us could acually hack
> our way out of a wet paper bag, and everyone else, though they
> were very nice people, were totally clueless.
>
> Look back, I see they got thru by being able to pass the tests
> on jargon and system architecture. but with coding:
> 1. No criteria for runtime
> 2. No criteria for size of source code
> 3. No criteria on flow charting or rational structure
> 4. No criteria on documenting any of the above
>
> All it hadda do was work, and the "it" was incredibly
> simple programming tasks. Not once did I have a conference
> with a professor looking over my source code. This was on
> both the PDP 9 and the IBM 360 mainframe. Among the few of
> us who knew what you could do with a computer, Cobol was a
> sick joke, kinda like Dilbert trying to explain things to a
> marketing hack, only in this case it was for a business major.
>
> In a lotta ways, it resembles the teaching of Chess or Go.
> You can lay out the principles of the game, but they either
> =get= it or they do not, and while anything they can learn
> might actually work, it's like dancing bear. It ain't elegant.
>
> And, the Y2K thing today, is like coming across a chessboard
> 30 odd moves in a game, without having any clear cut strategy
> that made any sense on either side, and even perhaps without
> the move record (source code), and programmers today are spozed
> to figure it out. Fat chance, quick trip to the asylum.
>
> Back then, we worked with punched cards, like your tax return
> check. I remember handing a batch the thickness of a poker
> deck to the acolyte at the 360 window, and seeing another guy
> show up with a shoebox full of punched cards. What's goin on?
> Well when that turkey has a crash, he just changes one card in
> the deck to point to a different subroutine, adds that, and
> lets the mainframe recompile. Quick and dirty. As soon as it
> works, he quits working on it. Kinda like a new house which
> the builders left all the tools and mistakes they made laying
> around in the hallways.
>
> Next question: Are the programmers today any different? does
> their course work include any of the 4 criteria above? How
> many are out there hired by boardrooms to fix a problem they
> have no clue on how to deal with, but so long as they can
> string the executive suites along they will get paid?
>
> Is there anyone who does not know that Microsoft postponed the
> release of Windows 2000 until the second quarter of 1901?
>
> What did you go thru to get =your= credentials? How many of
> your classmates were incompetent?
>
> I'm just looking for a clue.
> This is uncopywriten material. do whatever you want with it.
> -- Arachne V1.50;beta, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://home.arachne.cz/
>
>
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