On 14 Jun 2011 12:18:55 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote: >On 6/14/2011 1:06 PM, Frank Swarbrick wrote: >> The "non-IT" thing is interesting. >> >> At my company we have many application developers that started elsewhere at >> the company. Me, for one. I personally had previous IT skills, and some >> schooling in programming, but most of the others I believe did not. >> >> Do non-IT people make better COBOL programmers? Why might that be? >> >> Frank > >Well, the rationale is, I think, that students in university IT >programs today will only have seen Windows / Unix / Linux and >they probably have a pre-disposition against the mainframe. > I suspect that it is because the university/4 year college curriculum may not do much to prepare people for business programming. Also Computer Science graduates may want and get more money.
Clark Morris > >Do you remember Neodata up in Boulder, Frank? They used to have >an annual Entry Programmer Training series we ran for them. > > >One year there was a janitor working there who I met when >he was replacing a burned out fluorescent ceiling light. The >next year he was in the program (and that year the language >was Assembler). He ended up being a bit an Assembler guru >at the shop. > > >When I went through my first training at IBM, we had over 40 >people in the course including accountants, a former stewardess, >two former ministers, and other backgrounds too varied to recall. > > >That reminds me: what ever happened to those IT apptitude >tests? You never hear much about them these days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
