FWIW:
I have a computer science degree from the university of Stuttgart,
Germany (from 1977 to 1985).
We learned Pascal first, then different Assembler languages. During my
studies, I got interested in
compiler construction, and I am the maintainer of the New Stanford
Pascal compiler today, look here:
http://bernd-oppolzer.de/job9.htm
Later I learned Fortran, RPG, COBOL, PL/1, REXX of course ...
During my career I met many very sharp people who didn't have a degree
(only some sort of
on-site education, starting as an insurance specialist, for example,
then changing to the IT department),
but they had the same (system) programming skills that I had. The degree
is not what made me a
systems programmer. But I would not accept someone as a systems
programmer who cannot program
in ASSEMBLER (on IBM mainframes) or in C (at Unix and Windows
platforms). All others IMO are
some sort of admins.
Regarding "machine code": I also did classes for dump analysis, and one
of my students said,
Bernd is reading dumps of machine code like others read the newspaper :-)
I don't want to do that; my Pascal compiler writes language specific
dumps, where the variables
and there contents are shown in Pascal syntax, but if there are no such
tools, and nothing helps
and the error must be solved, I read the hex dumps, of course. No matter
if the system is MVS or VSE.
Kind regards
Bernd
Am 04.09.2023 um 04:56 schrieb Bill Johnson:
Nothing more arrogant than saying someone isn’t a systems programmer unless
they have my abilities. And your education is meaningless, just ask Gabe
Goldberg or “machine language” Bernd.
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