William Blair's post is in most respects a superb one. There is, however, an important omissis. I already had IBSYS dump-reading skills; I learned to read OS dumps beginning with OS/PCP, i.e., in a radically simpler world; I was able to come to terms with increasing complexity incrementally, over many years; and I had others to talk to about my perplexities.
'Learn it alone and unaided!' is now a counsel of despair. If you want to learn these skills you need to apprentice yourself, at least part-time, to someone who already has them. Find a situation in which you can consult him or her several times a day, and make sure that he or she has something of a vocation for teaching. I have found it possible to impart these skills to two inexperienced but admittedly very able teenagers using such an apprenticeship scheme. In doing so I avoided introducing them to dump-reading aids (other than hexadecimal calculators) until very late, but I did give much attention to the many ways in which all IBM systems are similar, to frequently encountered control-block chaining schemes, stacks, pools, queues and unholy, impure mixtures of them. I have not compared notes with anyone else who has imparted/taught these skills successfully; but there are certainly other equally viable ways to do so that differ in substantial detail from mine. I suspect, however, that the availability of a mentor or mentors is crucial. They figure centrally in other professional training schemes, be they for surgeons or steamfitters. Exclusively do-it-yourself schemes will fail; homo sapiens is too short-lived a species; and preternatural dedication must anyway not be expected or required. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
