I missed both operations and applications programming. I was a field
engineer when the division took over responsibility for maintenance of
OS/360. They sent a couple hundred of us who scored well on the
programmer's aptitude test to Poughkeepsie, where we spent six months
learning assembler, JCL, utilities, dump reading, the hardware and
software architecture of the 360 and OS/360 (PCP). Afterwards, we were
assigned to several different system programming groups in the
Poughkeepsie lab for the remainder of our 2 years there.
At the end, we were to return to the field as Program Support Reps
(PSRs). Instead, I stayed in Poughkeepsie as an instructor at the Field
Engineering education center where I taught OS/360. BDAM and ISAM
internals for the next 3 years. I then moved back to the lab just in
time to join the MVS design team (1971). There were others I recall who
took similar paths from FE to sysprogs, some of whom were also involved
in MVS design or development for its first release.
Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation
On 4/12/2010 10:40 AM, Greg Shirey wrote:
An instructor from Verhoef made the observation in a class I attended
that he had never met a mainframe systems programmer whose first job
was as a systems programmer, and his students invariably would say that
they were invited to become a systems programmer. So, he always said
"Welcome to the club" when someone in his class would admit that they'd
just begun as a systems programmer.
Greg Shirey
Ben E. Keith Co.
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Jim Marshall
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 6:34 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: How many mainframes are there?
If you want to consider this a club, then no one admits you.
<snip>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
