Forwards or Backwards 1

[ElijahBaley]

Ever since I bluffed my way into IT in 1999, I have been struggeling to make up for lost time and to catch up on all the experience and knowledge that I allowed to pass me by during the drunken years.

I sometimes wonder whether I am wasting my time by looking backwards to experimenting with partioning and multi-booting FAT, DOS and MBR's and all the rest of it, should I not just concentrate on the new technologies?

I tend to have two projects on the go at any one time, one old and one new - and I am here to tell you that I just CAN NOT DO IT ANY MORE!

So whats it to be - the old or the new...

Graham

 

[Voyager1]

This will not help you in any way, but I feel strongly that having a thorough knowledge of past technologies strengthens your handle on the new. Even though a knowledge of partitioning, disk structure and the like is not mandatory to load and operate today's OSes, it gives you a strong lead against the rest of the pack.

Those coming out of "fast track" training programs and Community Colleges are completely lost at a command prompt, heaven forbid an "Operating System Not Found" message.

Try to achieve a mix of both. The new stuff is important going forward, but don't lose those DOS skills...

A little help ... maybe??? - Bill

"You can get anything you want out of life, if you'll just help enough other people get what they want" - Zig Ziglar

 

[pivan]

Bill has a good point. IF you have the time...its not a bad idea to learn the old ways of the software Jedi's. Its a nice to have.

I am amused by some of the "younger"..(under 40 ??) MAC people that I sometimes teach that have never heard of a command line prompt.

But this isnt Star Wars and its time to put it in gear and pop the clutch. If time is limited I wouldnt worry about this stuff unless you truly have an interest and/or its part of your work/job etc. Keep up with the new technologies first. There is so much to learn in this constantly changing technical landscape that IMHO the biggest challenge is being selective about what you read and where you focus the efforts of yourself and your organization.

As a side bar, I have been succesfull in the IT and Software Development environment for many years and I have never had to worry about "partioning and multi-booting FAT, DOS and MBR's" as a matter of fact its not 100 % clear as to what this means.

Hope this helps...don't get overwhelmed...enjoy the work.

G'Luck,
Ivan
In not now, when?
If not here, where?
If not us, who?

Just do it!!

 

[ElijahBaley]

Thanks Ivan and Bill

As I suspected, the old is as important as the new.
To be quite honest I quite enjoy it and contrary to the tone of my first posting if I did not feel that I was perched between something fadeing in the distance and something glinting on the horizon it would not be quite so exciting!

Cheers

Graham

 

[NinaToo]

Hello, gjdf1!

I'm a fairly recent "newbie" to the world of computers and programming. I have about 4 1/2 years of experience. Before then, I was engaging in learning a new career after I got sick and tired of teaching (I taught high school math).

I was in a special community college program where we crammed in two years of college computer courses into one very full-time year. And the last course which we were assigned to take was COBOL.

Boy did I ever squawk! "Who wants to learn COBOL, this is a dead, dinosaur language -- no one uses COBOL any longer!!!" But they insisted that I take the course, and so I did.

And amazingly, the first computer programming job I got was in a mainframe environment, coding in COBOL. And I learned that COBOL is most definitely not dead at all.

I learned all sorts of cool stuff, such as Client-Server technology. And I also learned that, for many companies and agencies, they need those mainframes to store all that data. And mainframes mostly speak COBOL.

In the meantime, my old community college dropped COBOL from their special course.

At any rate, I lost my old job last November. And discovered that there just aren't a lot of COBOL programmers out there; apparently college students must have decided also that COBOL is a "dead" language and thus no one has been taking it.

I didn't have to worry about such things as age discrimination; employers were simply glad to know that I can code in COBOL (and CICS and DB2 and IDMS and JCL and other such cool things). I got calls from them just about every day.

Three months later, I got my current job, with a hefty pay raise. And I'm sitting here in front of my PC (which is part of a WINDOWS NT configuration). And I'm chortling at all those folks who turned their noses up at COBOL who are still out there with the huge number of community college/tech school grads, all competing for those dot.com jobs, while the dot.coms continue to lay off.

I have learned that COBOL is more alive than ever, and isn't going to go away anytime soon. We're using it to hook up the Internet with our huge computers, using Java and other new languages, to hook into a CICS interface which will allow our mainframes to continue talking in good ol' COBOL.

And now they're talking Object Oriented COBOL and Visual COBOL. As I said, it's not going away anytime soon.

As for DOS, I suspect that will be around for a bit. The Microsoft folks thought that they could ditch DOS when they came out with Windows 95 and Windows 98 (and I suppose Windows 2000). But it's still got DOS underneath all the GUI.

So you never know with these supposedly "old" technologies.

Nina Too

 

[pivan]

...and I thought Cobol was a precious metal.

I have always been surprised how education has dropped Cobol from their venues. During the Y2K crisis the feeling that I got was that, on a lines of code basis, Cobol was the most significant language going. I have worked most of my software projects integrating a web app to legacy data or a mainframe system. For sheer brute processing power and effficiency it seems like you just cant beat the 'big iron' mainframes.

Goes to show you that you need to stay close to relevent technologies.

Now then ...how do we know which technologies will stay relevent.
In not now, when?
If not here, where?
If not us, who?

Just do it!!

 

[NinaToo]

Well, the more that educators don't teach COBOL -- the more dough that us old COBOL programmers will make. :-D

Nina Too

 

[NinaToo]

----------
Now then ...how do we know which technologies will stay relevent.
----------

Good question. I think that you simply have to keep watching the trends -- and also use your logic. Think to yourself, what technology is going to work?

I wouldn't check places which say that Technology X is the hottest thing going. Because then there will be zillions of folks rushing to learn that techology, and thus zillions of folks competing with you.

You simply have to use "hunches" and common sense.

Hope this helps, Nina Too

 

[pivan]

Yeah....we were paying our ABAP4 programmers for SAP implementations well into six figures. Lots of people jumping on the bandwagon, but still a shortage, but not as bad. Now they are down to just six figures. Or we send it offshore to Bangalore India and pay $21/hour. In not now, when?
If not here, where?
If not us, who?

Just do it!!

 

[ElijahBaley]

Coincidentally I did actually study a bit of Cobol at one stage - but lost enthusiasm because I thought that I was following a dead language, everyone kept talking about 4g languages...

Graham

(gjdf1)

 

[NinaToo]

Graham, maybe you might think of taking a COBOL course or two. Though you'll still run into the "lack of experience" factor.

However, the agency I work for is desperate enough for COBOL programmers that they hired a bunch of entry-level folks and taught them COBOL; these folks were getting paid to learn COBOL. Though I'm getting paid more because I'm experienced.

I'm still using good ol' MVS/ESA COBOL along with CICS. Someday, I'd like to see some of the new COBOL products i.e. VisualAge COBOL and Object Oriented COBOL. But our sytem if gearing up toward using Java and related languages as the front end and using COBOL/CICS as the back-end. That way, our clients can interact with us directly via the Internet. This is a technology which looks like it will be around for a while.

Nina Too