On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Frank Swarbrick <[email protected]> wrote: > The "non-IT" thing is interesting.
> At my company we have many application developers that started elsewhere at > the company. Me, for one. I personally had previous IT skills, and some > schooling in programming, but most of the others I believe did not. > Do non-IT people make better COBOL programmers? Why might that be? As others have noted, because they don't have to unlearn bad habits, and might have some real-world smarts. I've worked with two CS PhDs; neither had a clue about real software. One hated customers -- he wanted to develop products, but not actually have to listen to real customer requirements -- and the other couldn't seem to grok a spec for a new program. I finally asked him, "Did you actually READ it??" and he replied "Yes, and I have a PhD in Computer Science." I managed *not* to reply, "Well, that explains it then..." Seriously, being smart and interested in and able to solve problems isn't in any way coupled with CS. I know a PhD in Economics who's a great programmer, and another with a Fine Arts degree. The best programmer I know *does* have a CS degree, but he's an anomaly in a number of areas. And I work with a bunch of kids who *cannot* understand how z/OS isn't like Windows/UNIX (yeah, yeah, of course I know there's USS -- ok, now let's get back to discussing [mis]use of that term...). -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
