On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:21:13 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>"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.
They were changing all of their applications from IBM Assembler to
Cobol and the access system couldn't be rewritten in Cobol. There was
no suggestion of making it a subroutine, which could have been done.
And, as I recall, it had a limitation of only being able to work with
2311/2314 disk. Another upgrade was going to be installing 3380 (I
think that's what they were) drives. So while it wasn't broke, it was
not ****table or upgradable.
Regards,
////
(o o)
-oOO--(_)--OOo-
"Marry me and I'll never look at another horse!."
-- Groucho Marx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remove nospam to email me.
Steve
|
