Paul Gilmartin wrote: >Not so clueless. Taken in the context of the article it was clearly >hyperbole, an attributive metaphor. The problem discussed, how to find >skilled personnel to maintain the mainframes and their software is real, >perhaps aggravated by ageism.
Indeed. But the article is subtle advertisement of topaz and the company behind it. I did not learn something new, but some may be inspired by this article. I would not be surprised if some young %$$hole asks me this: "Where do I click to IPL my z"? (If not standing before HMC of course. :-D ) About age and finding skills: A similar thing is happening on farms. Only hardworking old/ageing guys/gals are still working on farms. Generally the young boys/girls are too lazy or bored to work on a farm, they want to get rich quickly without hard work. Who of them want to look/care/handling animals, inspecting/repairing camps fences, drive around looking for weeds/non-indigenous trees to chop out or spray, driving a tractor up and down, up and down a field, etc., day after day? Who of these youngies want to go at 02:00 in night to help a cow during birth of a calve or chase away a predator at a chicken place? Or fixing burst pipes or driving to town 50 kilometres away, etc? (... or fending of a 4 metre python while showering in a farmhouse? That happend to a woman about a week ago. She survived while her small children and dogs were also in the house.) But one thing about that article I'm agreeing with: "The new breed of developers will not always be able to readily or accurately understand poorly documented COBOL and PL/l application logic ..." Who of you have not tried to update an application and by the very last dead-line, then only you understand the logic and flow of it...? ... and found some bug(s) impossible to fix without rewriting the whole %^&*# thing... Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
