Re: Is there a mainframe skills shortage?


"Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1175426708.488555.268220@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 31 Mar, 15:01, "Pete Dashwood" <dashw...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"Alistair" <alist...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1175337742.503099.254140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On 31 Mar, 03:22, "Pete Dashwood" <dashw...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
could try these links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/charlie/archive/2007/01/26/anders-hejlsberg-on-
http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/msdn/visualcsharp/LinqFarm01/LinqToSql01.wmv
http://themechanicalbride.blogspot.com/2007/03/dreaming-of-plinq.html

Three spelling mistakes in the word parallelize. Not an auspicious
start
and it makes it harder to take the rest seriously.

Does it? I guess I'm getting used to reading papers by people whose first
language isn't English.

While I love the English language, I keep its purpose in mind; it conveys
messages, thoughts and ideas.


You've obviously never worked for managers who could not spell.

Yes, I have. Sometimes it was hilarious. :-)

Just because I can spell (apart from the odd typo) does not make me think
less of people who can't. We all have strengths and weaknesses; we all have
different backgrounds. Of course, I prefer to read properly formed English,
but I try not to get unwrapped when it isn't.

I was in an Asian supermarket the other day and came across some Slimming
Tea. Here's a reproduction of what it said in English, on the label:

SLIMING TEA (herbal)

THIS HERB IS GOOD FOR THE OVER WEIGHTED PERSON WHO DO NOT WANT TO CONTROL
FOOD CONSUMING AND SHOULD BE TAKEN BOTH MALE AND FEMALE.

Not exactly great English, but the meaning is clear. It made me smile, so I
bought some and it is quite pleasant tasting. The only drawback is that you
cannot use hot water, so it takes around 20 minutes to make...

I'll stop taking it immediately if it affects my slime level :-)

Of course, sometimes what you think is a spelling error actually isn't... I
remember seeing "Buff steak" on the menu in a restaurant in Kathmandu and
figured it was the local mispronunciation of "Beef". It wasn't; it was
actually buffalo...:-)

There
is a difference between "You're fired" and "you're fried".

I don't think so...:-)

To convey
accurately a message it is necessary to spell. I have encountered
poorly written/constructed texts before (the classic being the
advocate of word-processors who said that there was no need to plan a
document, just get on and write it. It made spaghetti code look
succinct and well laid out) and usually take it to be a sign of poor
thinking and weak arguments.


Then we must agree to differ. Imagine how you would do in a foreign
language... would you be any less logical or have weaker arguments?



http://www.intelligententerprise.com/010327/celko_online.jhtml;jsessi...

Nice try. I've never heard of Kdb (functional database?) but I have
heard of
Cache (OO database works well with Java). I do wonder what the point
is in
putting up proud boasts of the Kdb performance when there are no
comparative
figures for SQL Server, etc.

They are not proud boasts and that wasn't the point. It isn't a contest;
he
is simply saying that these techniques can handle high volume traffic.
Note
it was a Pentium 2... If he wanted to boast he would have posted multi
core
blade server figures.

But he did not post any comparative figures for other software/
hardware combinations so I am left none the wiser. I can, with
justification, point out that Adabas can handle a higher transaction
rate than DB2 but unless I post comparative figures DD and yourself
would joyfully rip my argument to pieces.


Not me. I have better things to do. I'd accept it as your opinion and move
on.

Besides, I really don't care, as long as they both perform useful work.



The non-standard syntax should put people
off,
though.

It isn't "non-standard" syntax, it is a new syntax for query expressions.

The author of the article said that it was a non-standard syntax (so
there! 8-P )

That's because the author of the article is comparing it to standard SQL.
Most people do. (I did when I first encountered it... until I did a lot more
reading and experimenting and started to understand WHY it is structured in
the unfamiliar way it is, and how it can do so much more BECAUSE it is.)
But, as always, I'm not here to Evangelize; I think if people want to do
multi-file merges and recreate databases, use utilities, or embedded SQL,
that's fine. But don't run away smugly thinking it is "better", or the best
way to do things, and, especially, don't write off someone else's approach
simply because you are unfamiliar with it, or because said person is young
and therefore couldn't possibly understand the elegance of your empirically
acquired approach.

There is some very exciting stuff coming out of "Computer Science" lately
and it is filtering into mainstream. Anders Helsberg covers it very well in
the interview and it is covered in more detail and even better (at lower
level of coding with examples and results) in another interview I watched
but am now unable to retrieve. It was a lecture by one of the guys on the
Linq team and it was excellent.

(But Hey, I've never loaded 60 million records to a database, so my opinions
here are probably not worth much :-))


They are deliberately formulated differently from current SQL (although
they
look similar) for reasons that become apparent in some of the other links
and material around Lamdas and functional programming. Formulating the
expressions in the way shown, allows decision trees

Welcome back to the 1970s.

Mid-sentence interruptions are considered rude by some people... (Not me, I
just find them off-putting...)

(They are not THOSE decision trees anyway... :-))

to be implenented
without actually doing any I/O at all (it is a form of deferred
execution),
and allows the data requirement to be manipulated by other processes (and
possibly on different processor cores), before it is actually executed.
These are quite different concepts than the ones we are used to with
embedded SQL.

Although these ideas have been around for quite some time, it is only now
that they have reached the mainstream and that was partly because C# is
an
ideal vehicle for them, and implements them easily. Other OO type
languages
will also do so.

Where will these technologies be in 10 years? Where will Ruby

on
Rails be? Nowhere.

I don't know anything much about Ruby,

In pc circles, Ruby on Rails is one of the latest fave rave must haves
for any programming fashionista.

Not being one, I wouldn't know...

so I would refrain from predicting
its future or lack thereof. I do know something about COBOL and my
predictions on that are a matter of record.

There is a problem: so many technologies, so little

time
to pick the winner.

Only if you see it as a contest. It isn't.

No, it is a matter of earning money to pay for the mortgage. At least
with mainframe systems there were limited choices and it was pretty
obvious which languages were the ones to learn. Now there are so many
languages, databases, blah blah blah, and it is difficult to decide
which one to learn. I'm aiming for Java (someone is going to have to
maintain the code being written today when everyone else has decided
it isn't sexy and moved on to Ruby and Kdb, etc.).

Probably a good choice, even if not necessarily for the reasons you
mention... :-)

But in one respect it is a competition - survival of the fittest
although the fittest don't always win.

In the long run that which is best suited will survive. "Best suited" may
well mean understanding the changes going on and adapting to them, rather
than holding the Fortress.

Why does everything have to be a hammer? Why aren't we all driving one
make
of car, buying one brand of toothpaste, wearing one type of watch... and
so
on...? There are different interpretations of an agreed underlying
technology.

We are: INTEL chips, WINDOWS platform, JAVA runtimes, XHTML encoded
pages, IE7 browser, MS OFFICE ..... although some do persist in using
AMD (I have one!), Linux, C# (which probably doesn't work under
Linux)...

C# runs fine under Linux. Have a look around the Web.


It is exactly the same with software. When there is a sea change in the
technology (and I am suggesting that Functional Programming and Lamda
expressions will do that for data binding and access), there will be
different implementations of it in different languages.


This isn't about a sea-change in technology. It is about what the kids
at university were taught 10 years ago. You just have to look at how a
poor operating system (Unix) has taken over the world to see that.


I think I heard this speech some time ago regarding BetaMax and VHS... Let
it go. Unix has NOT taken over the World and even if it does, what's your
beef? If you intend to pay the mortgage off by application programming (as
you said above) why would you care what OS is in use? It's not like you have
to maintain it...

This whole discussion started when it was suggested that CS grads should
stick to writing system software and leave applications to the COBOL
people.

I have only ever met one CS graduate and he was the world's worst
programmer. He would have been dangerous writing compilers and system
software.


Well, you wisely didn't jump to a conclusion based on a sample of one. I've
worked with quite a number over the years and the general trend has been
towards improvement. Some of them are not so good; some are outstanding,
exactly as those who came out of the Business or off the street without the
benefit of College Education.

Everyone deserves a "fair go" and should be given the benefit of the doubt,
not judged on their spelling, or their dress code, or their hair length, or
whether they had higher education, or the colour of their skin, gender, age,
religious persuasion (or lack of it) or any other prejudicial factor. Solely
how good they are at solving problems in commercial computer programming,
and how likely they are to be valuable in achieving the current goals. After
many years of recruiting, working alongside, and managing people I have come
to recognise value in diversity.


I don't see that as being right or useful. And it cetainly isn't fair to
the
CS grads coming out of Acadaemia currently.

No, they all come out perfectly formed for applications system
writing, right?

No, and I never suggested that. Like all young people entering a profession
they will need mentoring and guidance and to acquire experience. If they are
not allowed to do it, they will never get that application experience.

What I am suggesting is that they are now beng taught best practices and new
techniques. That never used to happen because there WERE no best practices
or new techniques...


I don't know what they teach in Uni today and I will
admit that I am prejudiced against CS graduates in the applications
arena based on a sample size of 1 (which may be statistically
significant, but I can't remember my degree foundation course on
statistics).

Oops, I should have read further... you HAVE drawn a conclusion on a sample
of 1. Sad.

Twenty to thirty years ago, I probably would have agreed with you. Today, I
can't. I just don't think it is as bad as it was.

"I don't know what they teach in Uni today..." Perhaps that is the nub of
the problem. If you DID know, you might feel differently.


They are much better informed
than most of us ever were and they are flexible enough to implement
business
reqirements using the techniques and approaches they have been taught.
Just
because they don't write COBOL doesn't mean they are useless.

The techniques in the links I posted are not just new fangled fashions
that
simply re-invent what "everybody knows". This is the way of the future
and
one of the reasons that COBOL will not be part of it is because it cannot
implement these approaches easily and simply.

(That is no fault of COBOL... it uses a different, and now superseded,
paradigm.)

Pete.

I have no doubt that the future is not as the world is now, and that
programming will move on but I despair at languages that often seem to
be rephrasing of existing languages (C compared to Assembler) without
adding clarity and simplification of the code.

Compared to Intel Assembler, C IS a clarification and simplification. I
used to LOVE Intel Assembler and still have a bunch of TSRs I wrote in it
under DOS 3.1 :-) But things move on... I used to love IBM BAL, but was
dragged kicking and screaming into COBOL (in 1967 :-)). Now I wouldn't go
back... Probably in a few years time I'll tell you how I LOVED programming
in COBOL but wouldn't go back...
There is no progress without change, and I have made sure my career
progressed over 4 decades.



I remember that when I
first encountered SQL I could not take it seriously, but in skilled
hands it is certainly better than coding direct calls for data access.
In unskilled hands it is still better than having to code a thousand
lines of data division.


Sure, and a Lamda or Query expression can encompass a thousand lines of
SQL... :-) But if you don't look at it you will never know.

I would stress here that it isn't "wrong" to be uninformed; so long as you
don't start criticising that which you are not informed about.

Sometimes I just think it isn't really that important. I generate heat by
posting here, when that is not my intention. In the big picture it is all
just computer programming... :-)

Pete.


.