On 28 Jun 2006 08:42:16 -0700,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (David Shein) wrote:
>Oh, how that rings true. Next January will be the 37th anniversary
>of the FIRST time someone said to me, "don't waste your time learning
>assembler, it will be completely obsolete within four or five
>years." If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that (or a
>variation of it) since . . . wow. What a pile of money that would be.
>
>And with that lead-in, I bet you can guess how I still make my living. :)
Well, you're one of the lucky ones. But, the flip side of the "lack of
skills" that you mentioned in an earlier note might be related to
"lack of opportunity" to exercise those skills.
When I started working in this field back in 1977, right out of
college, I was living in Los Angeles. At the time, a mainframe
assembler programmer had a fair number of choices for exercising their
skills in that city:
* Applications Software International (ASI)
* Candle
* Continental Airlines (TPF)
* Flying Tiger (TPF)
* Phoenix Software International
* Ryan-McFarland
* TTI (Part of CitiCorp? TPF)
* Western Airlines (TPF)
(Geez, I've worked for *four* of those companies since 1977!)
Now, today, there are only two companies that I know of which are
still doing assembler development in LA: ASI and PSI.
Going back to those heady days of the seventies and eighties, TPF
programmers in particular had an aura of invincibility: the market for
their skills might not have been huge, but boy did TPF shops pay well.
"How could the airline industry ever do without our skills???" What
with consolidation, outsourcing and offshoring since then, I suspect
the hubris level of TPF programmers is not what it used to be.
Eric
--
Eric Chevalier E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: www.tulsagrammer.com
Is that call really worth your child's life? HANG UP AND DRIVE!
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