Re: OT: The Geek defense


"Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"SkippyPB" <swiegand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:21:13 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



"SkippyPB" <swiegand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:36:44 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



"tim" <TimJ@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:46:19 +1300, Pete Dashwood wrote:

http://www.washingtonpost.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 hashing
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 portable or upgradable.

Hmmmm... if the Assembler used standard housekeeping for IO it shouldn't
have mattered what device it was on. I suspect they just wanted rid... :-)

A callable subroutine would have been better, I would've thought.

Thaks for posting the response, Steve.

At least we know the reasoning, whether it was right ot not... :-)

Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."


A lot of direct access programming (BDAM) was device dependent and based on
numbers of cylinder, heads and tracks. There were some macros and techniques
that could be used to make it device independent but they were not always
used.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: The Geek defense
    ... If writing a file system for Linux is ... based around the structure of account numbers in that particular Bank. ... They were changing all of their applications from IBM Assembler to ... Cobol and the access system couldn't be rewritten in Cobol. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: OT: The Geek defense
    ... If writing a file system for Linux is ... based around the structure of account numbers in that particular Bank. ... They were changing all of their applications from IBM Assembler to ... Cobol and the access system couldn't be rewritten in Cobol. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)