It's not a mainframe vs PC thing or a work place versus Academia thing, it's a general lack of curiousity and initiative. Lot's of people can't be bothered to learn anything that they can avoid learning.
I have to partially disagree on theory: I believe that the failure to teach basic theory has caused a lot of problems. That said, I also believe that students should be exposed to several radically different languages along with the theory, but that it is misguided to concentrate on the language du jour. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Steve Thompson [ste...@wkyr.net] Sent: Monday, August 14, 2023 4:18 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: USS Features "Is it a non-west-coast specific mentality to ignore reality? Is COBOL bringing in top computer professionals because of the challenges it poses? ...." How about the prestigious Schools telling their students that COBOL is a dead or dying language? And indicating that Mainframes are obsolete and not keeping up with technology? I have relatives that have retired from a university (in the USofA) and one of them worked with Grad Students to help them get the computer lab time they needed, while also helping them get the resources they needed for any experiments and the like they needed to do involving IT. I also have a relative that retired in Germany from a school there, who had been teaching English to students from India. We won't get started on this, but I'm not making this stuff up. And they knew that I worked on mainframes. But when I told them that the language you say is dead is also an OO Language now. I told them about a few Standards put out for COBOL. They were astonished. Now granted, I know more about COBOL's pseudo OO abilities than I did back then. But that school got rid of their mainframe decades ago. And they had NO idea that the current IBM mainframes could run Java, c/C++, etc. They had no idea that the majority of their credit card transactions were being handled by a mainframe somewhere. They didn't know how many Banks, financial entities, Airlines, etc. ran their biz using obsolete mainframes making millions of obsolete dollars doing it. It is my opinion that the universities seem to be in their own Echo Chamber. And then to add insult to injury, they weren't (at that time) teaching any computer languages, they only taught theory. Say What!?! Yes, they only teach theory. So students have to learn a language on their own to get employed in IT. This is one of the top schools in the country. Not at Harvard's level, but something around Stanford's Level (speaking of Standford, they are the ones that destroyed the source for Wylbur when they migrated it to a non-mainframe environment). Then, I learned that several people from India that I had been working with had degrees, said that the school they went to in India only taught theory, they didn't teach any languages either!! It was no wonder that because I took care of the tool for getting compiles done, that they were using me for a help desk so I couldn't concentrate on things I needed to get done. The "compiler" had thrown an ABEND and I needed to fix it. The "compiler" was the utility for generating JCL to do their compiles. So it knew how to put together all the translators (CICS, DB2, IDMS, ProCOBOL, and all the linkedit stuff and DB2 BIND. The ABEND was the step after LINKEDIT which had failed with a non-zero CC. We had to put in these ABEND steps because they didn't bother to check if everything had worked before they'd run|reran their JOB to test the program. This is the level of people with degrees and a visa we are getting. That's my experience at one large insurance company. And you wonder about the recruiters that are also here with visas? Management wants to go cheap. They get what they pay for. Steve Thompson ps. Mainframes had color monitors in the mid-70s. Management didn't want to pay for them. Today mainframe is called Green screen. We had color before the PCs did. Just think about that. On 8/14/2023 3:41 PM, Jon Perryman wrote: > > On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 03:09:33 AM PDT, David Spiegel wrote: >> You said: "...Programmers leave z/OS for Unix in order to be in full control. >> I have not once heard any programmer leave for more control. >> Could this be a west-coast specific mentality? ... It would not be >> surprising. > Is it a non-west-coast specific mentality to ignore reality? Is cobol > bringing in top computer professionals because of the challenges it poses? > Who was it that convinced companies to switch from MVS to Unix because it is > superior? Do you consider Unix files superior when they haven't changed since > they were first conceived? Programmers flee to Unix because it offers real > computer challenges instead of z/OS forcing them to focus on the business. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
