"SkippyPB" <swiegand@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:4f7bs35q4kcbp71vbd88irhimoun85qksb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:36:44 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
> <dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>"tim" <TimJ@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>news:13s728si8g08id9@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:46:19 +1300, Pete Dashwood wrote:
>>>
>>>>
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/23/AR2008022300693_pf.html
>>>>
>>>> What I'd like to know is exactly HOW you can establish yourself as a
>>>> Geek,
>>>> so you can claim this defence. If writing a file system for Linux is
>>>> all
>>>> it
>>>> takes (a weekend's work for a COBOL programmer...), then there are a
>>>> lot
>>>> more Geeks around than many people may suppose.
>>>>
>>>> Did he do it? (Jo Brand, referring to O. J. Simpson: "Course he did
>>>> it;
>>>> he's a bloke...")
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts?
>>>>
>>>> Pete.
>>>
>>> You must be pretty good if you can write 15,000 lines of
>>> multi-processing kernel code in a weekend.
>>
>>Well, leaving aside the fact that I AM pretty good :-), it was said with
>>tongue-in-cheek...:-)
>>
>>As a matter of record, I once wrote a complete access method for a
>>mainframe
>>in a Bank, over a weekend. Another dedicated guy and myself worked on
>>implementing it into about 300 programs over the same weekend. It
enabled
>>direct access based on Account numbers and had its own ha****ng algorithm
>>based around the structure of account numbers in that particular Bank.
It
>>was a complete callable subsystem that implemented all the functions of
>>data
>>maintenance using VSAM RRDS. On Monday, everythng was working when the
>>staff
>>showed up. We had a total of 9 hours sleep each and were given the rest
of
>>the week off... :-) It was a long time ago; I wouldn't/couldn't do it
now
>>:-)
>>
>
> So you're the guy that did that!! First job I had out of college was
> working in an all IBM Assembler shop. They had about 20 different
> applications consisting of around 300 programs or so. One of the
> first changes they wanted was to convert their file access system from
> DA to ISAM (which was the soup de jour of the day). The reason was
> noone, and I mean noone myslef included, could figure out how the damn
> thing worked! It did work but neither I, the resident Assembler
> programmer or the account's IBM system engineer (back in the days when
> these guys could write code with the best of them) could figure out
> how it worked. The person that wrote it and moved on to another job
> in another state and wasn't available for questions. This wasn't a
> bank, but I'm going to blame you for my many nights of writing code to
> change the file access. :)
Not guilty. Mine was a "black box". I have to ask, though, if it worked,
and everyone agreed it worked, why change it?
Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
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