I shouldn't make such sweeping statements but I maintain that most
software developers I know over 40 years old are not interested in
learning new things.
New languages, git, Docker? Not interested! They want to crack on doing
what they have been doing for the last 20 years with no disruption. Even
if a new technology
is clearly superior they will use what they know because it works and
they can use it without expending time and energy learning something new
that they won't be an expert in.
On 2020-02-28 1:31 AM, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote:
Sorry David, but I must disagree with your blanket opinion that "... experienced
z/OS guys don't want to learn new stuff".
I would say rather that "... SOME experienced z/OS guys don't want to learn new
stuff". I am not one of those, and I have more than several colleagues at work who
like me embrace new things all the time. I also have colleagues who just don't take the
time to understand anything new or are very uncomfortable when new technology intrudes
into their work space. My experience is that far more of the latter type are those who
have abandoned technology as a career and have moved up into management positions than
those of us who chose to remain technologists because that's what we like to do. But I
must admit that there are some technologists who are too set in their ways or too fearful
to change.
This is just the normal human range of comfortability with "new things". Some old dogs
do want to and do learn new tricks all the time. Some don't. Some are just slow to appreciate how
"new things" can make work easier, but come around eventually.
For the record I am personally very comfortable with regexen and use them all the time in
awk scripts for work (yes, in both z/OS Unix and z/OS JCL) and in gawk scripts for hobby
/ home projects like managing my bank and credit card records. There is also a somewhat
newer scripting language named "miller" that has promise.
https://github.com/johnkerl/miller
Perl remains a mystery to me so far and I never have gotten around to playing
with Python, but I actually did briefly work with SNOBOL in MVT many moons ago
(parsing COBOL and JCL sources to build a cross-reference database,
unfortunately never completed) and after that got very interested in Icon for a
while. Ralph Griswold was an interesting pen pal for a short time back in the
1970's.
Lua remains a "new thing" for me to investigate (in my copious spare time . . .
😊 ).
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
David Crayford
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2020 11:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Rexx parse using period as placeholder
I never said "old programmers". That would be self defeating as I "am"
an old programmer. My point was that experienced z/OS guys don't want to learn
new stuff. And I stand by that because it's true!
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