Telling the modern mainframe story
S Comstock
Last month my wife and I were at a dinner at a friend's house. We got to
talking about work and the hostess mentioned she was a COBOL programmer at a
local company. I asked what version of COBOL she was using. "I don't know,
COBOL 370 or something like that."
I pursued her knowledge a little bit and was shocked to find she had no idea
about the changes in COBOL, mainframes, the Internet, and so on, for the last,
say, 10 years!
For someone who strives constantly to be current, this blew me away. But I got
to thinking about it and realized she was probably more typical than I am. More
typical than the people who subscribe to this list.
It drives me nuts realizing how little both management and technical people
know about what's going on in their field. IBM's not telling the story very
well, that's for sure. Mainframes are still perceived as obsolete clunkers by
the vast majority of people - even in the industry.
So I've started a little page on my web site of what I call VSPs - Very Short
Presentations. I'm trying to communicate information about modern IBM mainframe
systems in short sound-bite type presentations: PDF's of 5 to 8 pages, lots of
bullets. These can be downloaded free of charge from
http://www.trainersfriend.com/VSP_site.htm
Feel free to point management or technical people to them. Although the last
page in each VSP is our contact sheet, you can download a presentation and if
you have the full Acrobat product you can just remove the last page. The point
is to tell the story.
There may be some errors in this batch, since I just whipped up half a dozen in
a day. If you find errors I am happy to correct them. If you have suggestions
for other topics, let me know. I'll be adding new ones periodically. Let me
know if this way of telling the modern mainframe story is of any benefit to
your shop.
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
800-993-9716
303-393-8716
www.trainersfriend.com
email: st...@trainersfriend.com
256-B S. Monaco Parkway
Denver, CO 80224
USA
docd...@panix.com
S Comstock <scom...@aol.com> wrote:
>'Lo,
>
>Last month my wife and I were at a dinner at a friend's house. We got to
>talking about work and the hostess mentioned she was a COBOL programmer at a
>local company. I asked what version of COBOL she was using. "I don't know,
>COBOL 370 or something like that."
>
>I pursued her knowledge a little bit and was shocked to find she had no idea
>about the changes in COBOL, mainframes, the Internet, and so on, for the last,
>say, 10 years!
>
>For someone who strives constantly to be current, this blew me away. But I got
>to thinking about it and realized she was probably more typical than I am. More
>typical than the people who subscribe to this list.
And this might be why she does what she does... and you do what you do.
>
>It drives me nuts realizing how little both management and technical people
>know about what's going on in their field.
I am not sure if this is the cause or it is the difference between 'if it
ain't broke, don't fix it' and 'let's take it apart to see how it works!'
A buddy o' mine used to be Materials/Inventory Manager for a jewelery
manufacturer... he could never understand folks who considered inertia to
be valuable, in and of it'sself. After a meeting where things got a
bit... heated a VP took him aside and asked, seriously, what the problem
was... after all, in his (the VP's) department they'd been doing things
exactly the same way for the past twenty years.
'Where's your passion for work?', asked my buddy, 'Where do you strive to
do something more, where to you work to make things better?'
'You don't understand', said the VP, 'we've been doing the exact same
thing for the past twenty years.'
The VP could not understand why anyone would not see this as a Very Good
Thing.
>IBM's not telling the story very
>well, that's for sure. Mainframes are still perceived as obsolete clunkers by
>the vast majority of people - even in the industry.
Even before mainframes were 'perceived as obsolete clunkers'... how many
programmers in a given shop are allowed any sort of training in language
changes, as opposed to 'pick it up as you go along... and Prod Must Not Go
Down'?
And the there's... well...
From:
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=7cucq6%24san%241%40clarknet.clark.net&output=gplain>
--begin quoted text:
>Other may prefer programming languages with more modern
>constructs.
Others may, sure... but let them *try* to get some code past a review and
implemented into Prod!
'What is *this* stuff? EVALUATE TRUE WHEN cond-1 imperative statement...
you call this COBOL?!?'
'Oh, please, Mr Standards-and-Practises Reviewmeister, it is exactly what
is allowed by the ANSI '85 Standard.'
'ANSI '85? Crap, I *knew* things were goin' ta hell in a handbasket when
we allowed them fancy ANSI '74 constructs in a couple a' years back...
look, 1985 is only 14 years ago, we oughta wait until the technology is
Really Proven before we implement it. Go back and rewrite this in *real*
COBOL, then try again.'
--end quoted text
This was posted in 1999... things have changed so very much since then,
haven't they?
DD
Richard
> It drives me nuts realizing how little both management and technical people
> know about what's going on in their field.
But you are talking about what you perceive as _your_ field, not
theirs. The programmer's 'field' is writing code for accounting
systems to print out invoices and reports. The major changes there in
the last 100 years was the introduction of sales taxes.
> IBM's not telling the story very
> well, that's for sure.
Yes, they are. But some aren't listening because they really just
don't care.
Just because someone drives a 15 year old car, it doesn't mean that
they have to read the latest technical car magazines and read all the
reviews. Your car may represent, to you, the pinnacle of technical
development of fuel, turbo, and gearbox, and you may be planning to
get the next model because it has GPS or voice speed readout or
somesuch. To others it is just a box you get in at one point and get
out at the other with the least amount of money spent.
Robert Jones
Great idea, Thanks
Robert
scjp
news:20040226094844...@mb-m15.aol.com...
> For someone who strives constantly to be current, this blew me away. But I
got
> to thinking about it and realized she was probably more typical than I am.
More
> typical than the people who subscribe to this list.
>
In my experience with over a dozen companies, most people "have jobs". The
few that have a "career" and some type of ambition are few and far between.
If you're staying current (and by that I mean keeping up-to-speed with
non-language-specific technologies like XML, web-services, or OO), then I'd
hazard a guess that your company actually cares about it. If not, you
should try consulting ;)