On Tuesday 23 July 2002 06:52 pm, Douglas C Ponte wrote: [...] > Obviously, we have a huge shortage of college-age interest in mainframes > (but, not Linux, which I agree is a major key in solving this via > "crossover potential") due to a few factors [...]
I spent a year writing articles about mainframe Linux, and was stunned by the *high* level of interest from young techies in what I thought would be perceived as an "old clunky" technology. My first article generated over 700 emails in response, and many of them were from high school and college Linux advocates. In many cases they had never even seen a mainframe in person, but they were really impressed with what they were seeing now. I've had the same reaction from young engineers and programmers when I've given presentations, including some at LUGs. Your comments are well-put, and I agree with most of the reasons why mainframes are perceived as not being needed. I would just add that in my experience most of the "lack of interest" is actually "lack of awareness." When people start to see the capability of the platform, they get interested, very rapidly. IBM needs to find ways of reaching college students. I think the LCDS could play a role in this -- it's a really terrific tool! Maybe some publicity of LCDS to LUGs near major colleges would help. I'm not a marketing expert, so I'm sure IBM can come up with something better than any idea of mine. Oh, wait, this is the company that de-marketed OS/2 into oblivion. Never mind. (Just kidding, IBMers. You redeemed yourselves with The Heist commercial!) Companies could also help. Offer internship programs that put Linux-literate college students in teams with mainframe wizards. That's the cheapest Linux training you'll ever buy for your best, most experienced mainframe gurus. And it's a great challenge for brilliant college students who probably have exhausted the technical challenges of the Intel platform long ago. Retain good future talent by offering interesting and hard-to-find challenges. [...] > > Going to those assembler classes didn't go well for many of the > students...moaning and groaning for most of the way, especially in the > beginning. Why? Boo-hoo, it's not C++. In any case, there are students > like myself who DID find it fascinating to see how this complied C code I'd > been taught so much about was used as assembler...and then as > microcode...learning about fetching, the ALU and parallel computing, etc. > I wish they had 10 more courses, if I had known I'd be working here on the > z/VM product. I can *really* relate to this! I graduated with dual degrees in EE and CompE from the University of Missouri (class of 1985). I was designing computers at home as a hobby while I was in high school, and I learned to program in binary (hand-assembled code) because I couldn't afford the $3500 that Intel wanted for an assembler program for the 8080. Nor the $800 for an 8" floppy from which to load it. When I taught myself machine coding, I literally didn't know there was such a thing as a high-level language. I got interested in computers by reading chip manuals, and had no idea about programming other than "that's what you have to do to make the hardware do something cool." I thought of it as an extension of hardware design, a necessary evil. (Some would say that I had the right idea...<grin>) Naturally, by the time I entered college I knew about BASIC and FORTRAN, but found them to bee too confining compared to assembler. When I got to the classes in microcode and bit-slice architectures, I was in my glory! We had professors who were learning right along with us, playing with some of the hottest hardware of the day. There were classes where no textbook existed yet, and the instructor taught from his own research notes. My experience with other students mirrors yours very closely. In one class, I remember there being about thirty students total. Maybe three to five of us really wanted to be there, but we were *passionate* about it. We would get into arguments with the prof, right there in class, and he seemed to love it when that happened because it challenged his own mind more than just teaching to intellectual sponges. Often the discussions would spill over to his office afterward. The rest of the class just couldn't understand why we actually cared whether the circuit drawing on the board was fully optimized. But we did! Anyway, congrats on your recent graduation and welcome to the IT field. I'm sorry to say that we really *are* as weird as your professors warned you -- especially the VM sysadmins and the Penguins. Have fun. When it isn't fun any more, do something else. Scott (Sine Nomine Associates http://sinenomine.net/) -- -----------------------+------------------------------------------------------ Scott Courtney | "I don't mind Microsoft making money. I mind them [EMAIL PROTECTED] | having a bad operating system." -- Linus Torvalds http://4th.com/ | ("The Rebel Code," NY Times, 21 February 1999) | PGP Public Key at http://4th.com/keys/courtney.pubkey
