Interesting historical reference. I never actually worked on NCR or in Neat/3, but it was used as the programming language for a civil service test I took many decades ago to apply for a county-level programming job. The problem was that the civil service test announcement never told people who registered for the test that the programming part would require knowledge of Neat/3 (a COBOL look-alike language as I remember being told) so I wrote a long note at the beginning of my answer complaining that Neat/3 was not a commonly known language and was not included in the test announcement and wrote all the test answers in ANSI COBOL.
The civil service commissioner responded to the letter of complaint that I sent by declaring that everyone who took the test and answered in COBOL passed but never apologized for failing to post the Neat/3 language requirement in the test announcement. As my mother (a lifelong civil service employee) told me when I described the test to her, the announcement was obviously an "insider announcement" never actually intended to attract anyone not already "in the system". I got on the civil service list for that position but soon after had a far better offer in the private sector and never looked back. Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bill Hitefield Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2021 9:48 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [External] Programs that work right the first time. Do you remember Neat/3 on the NCR? An interesting language. On third shift at a local bank, I remember setting up card-driven operation "control decks" where we "dialed" HDDs back and forth to keep from having to move the disks. Bill Hitefield Dino-Software Corporation 800.480.DINO 423.878.5660 -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
