jasmine Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 [color:"red"] The best technichians worked for companies like Univac, CDC, Bull etc., [/color] Univac does exist in a new spirit of Unisys and still is very alive and kicking. One of the Mainframes we are taking care of is the Unisys Mainframe. Unisys is still the large competitor of the good old IBM. Actually the Unisys was the comapny who consolidated the IRS from 7 centers into 2 centers sucessfully with the IBM as the sub-contractor. Mind you this consolidation was attempted by 2 companies previously and one of them was the IBM. Do I sound like I work for the Unisys, you bet your $$$ and very proud of it. I and many of my collegues are the ones who know Unisys and IBM machines and Unix and whatever else as needed. The Unisys just announced yesterday that we need 900 people more in the next 18 mos. Good news or what!!! Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALHOLK Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Hi! Yes I did know that Univac still existed under new name. A Univac 1108 was the first computer I wrote a program for when I studied computer science. Howeve many others have disapeared, e.g. DEC witch's machines I worked with during the 80's, both mainframes and minis. VMS was a great OS, it's a rather wide spread opininon among programmers that know it that if DEC had made it open like Unix the latter would neve have got outside of Bell labs. regards ALHOLK P.S. I'm not sure but I think that Bull might still exist, possibly under another name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasmine Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Hi, Univac and Borroughs were the first machines I worked with in the 70s (showing you how old the old programmer I am). Then I worked with the Univac system again in the early 80s, left to the IBM in 1990, never though I would ever see the Unisys again, what a shock. In the IT, I have come to a conclusion that ones never know what ones going to end up with. My very mistake was, I threw out all the Univac and Unisys manuals in 1997, 5 months before the Unisys came recruiting Hubby and I. It is fascinating that some old technologies are still very effective. I still use DOS and Assembler, believe or not!!! :: There was an article in a magazine a month ago mentioning that within 5 years, the US IT may be in trouble for the old programmers like me will be in the age of retirement and the old dinoseurs like us are the ones who are behind good systems at this time, what do you think? Perhaps, I won't care. At this time what seems to be good business is the Configuration Management and the Disaster Recovery projects. They just cut the budget again, another contracting company is leaving within 30 days, however the Unisys is staying becuase we are the ones who do all technical support here. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted April 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 Jas and Al, It's easy for people to dismiss the 'old' technology companies, but they have had a profound impact on the landscape at the 'high end', and the mainframe is far from dead in that space. I worked with Honeywell mainframes in the beginning, and moved to stuff like the VAX and, later, OSF from the once-great Digital Equipment Corporation. Whatever the failings of IBM, DEC, Burroughs and their ilk, they built qulaity hardware and software, albeit at a premium. HP were also a great Unix vendor - not sure how they shape up post merger. All of their products, whilst assuming a technically savvy user community, had performance and quality standards well beyond anything Microsoft could roll out in the 90's. Anyway, I didnt come here to bash Micro$oft - as much fun as that is - they are still laughing all the way to the bank, and a lot of the older companies were simply too rigid to adapt to changing conditions. That's reality, but I still look back on a lot of the 'dinosaurs' with an affection that I simply dont feel toward Dell, Compaq or you-know-who. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 Wow!!! You are really one of a kind. You must be one of the Thai pioneers in IT. What an incredible background. As for your recent activities, I actually envy you writing assembly under Dos. Ahh, those were the days when coding seemed so sensical. The new ways of writing software are getting more and more abstract, complex, and diverse. I liken writing software to designing a car. In the early days, Henry Ford was able to make a car all by himself. Now it would take hundreds, maybe thousands of people to design a car. Software is going the same direction. You need lots of specialists in lots of emerging areas to get it done. Don't worry about becoming obsolete. What will happen is there will be very few people like you left. So when someone does need your skills, they'll pay more due to the very limited supply. This has happened in a number of "old" areas of IT already. To use the car analogy again, cars start by being new and cool. Then there is a long time they seem old and outdated, but then they become antiques and more valuable and esteemed than ever before. I think you should be proud to have experienced the golden era of IT. Very colorful people! Maybe it's the tape on the glasses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasmine Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 Hi, First, none of my work was in Thailand, I graduated for BS and MS here in the States, so I am not a Thai IT pioneer. On Assembler, I look at it only when I really have to and I don't put "Assembler" in my resume, it gives me a headache. I am a Configuration/Quality Assurance Manager so I manage all components including the software. We have from old time COBOL, Assembler to Java, C++ and many Web Scripts and so on. I have not done any sizable programming for the past 7 years and I doubt that I will again. I am trying to set up the Configuration Plan for the Unix platform now and I heard a rumor that because there are so many servers, components, COTS in these systems that they are actually look like spagetti and it is hard to manage, they may be using the IBM Mainframes again. Remember, years ago, the complaints were the mainframes were too expensive? Guess what, they are finding out that the smaller computers are just about as expensive and actully are harder to keep track of all components. QA/CM is not an easy job and we are hated by programmers becuase we normally catch them doing things their own way without following procedures (and we get MEAN). I just love the work, a good programmer friend told me once that "Only programmers with NO sense would do CM/QA jobs". Well, I am one of those [color:"red"]Very colorful people! Maybe it's the tape on the glasses. [/color] We are proud but I am getting exhuasted here and thanks for the kind words. Jasmine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gummigut Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 First machine I worked on was probably an IBM 5100. Gahhh <<burp>> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Says bibblies: Says descartes: My view of XP is that for a small project, with an unchanging team, in one location, in one time zone, all highly experienced, committed, motivated and driven, it can yield great results. Back on planet earth, where you need repeatable results with " generic" people who can be plugged in and out, a small amount of formal analysis, design and documentation is mandatory. XP is an avant-garde, egalatarian concept that simply does not work in the majority of large IT shops. It does have a place for disposible, short-life point solutions, for inexperienced clients to whom lines of code are the only tangible deliverable, but I would not use it for anything other than medium size risk-mitigation projects... I think you're dismissing it too lightly. It is what it is - a light, adaptive methodology and you can take what you want from it. There are undeniably good bits in it - everyone seems to agree that unit testing and writing the tests before coding is a great idea. If you want more formal documentation, etc, you could incorporate some of its ideas into the Unified Process, say. I like adaptive processes. In the "real world", things change. I come from the perspective that RUP is as small or large as the need requires, and I do not see what is fundementally wrong with it. It may be abused by inexperienced or ego-tripping practationers, but the RUP iterations could be one day or one year..the principles are sound. My biggest problem with XP is the lack of any architectural or design phase. A trajectory of a project is unstoppable after any significant amount of resource has been expended, and thus the entire project becomes based on fragile foundations. In the only case where I allow my judgement to be influenced by a talented but short-sighted developer, and used XP, we spent more time is spent clearing up things that could easily have been forseen, rather than adding functionality. Im sure you appreciate Architecure design and Code design are quite different things, and it is much easier to fix the latter than the former. XP has traditionally dismissed architecture by virtue of rarely mentioning it. It seem to mimic RUP in some areas - Use Case <-> User Story etc, and omit it in others. As a day to day description of interactions beween developers it is interesting..as a methodology for repeatable success across mediocre resources..it does not get my vote. Regards Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Says artiew: Bibblies, Disagreements between two more experienced programmers are another area which I would consider a potential downside. I see enough of this in code reviews, and its often necessary for a 3rd party to be able to say - 'Hey, you're BOTH right, just put down the carving knives !'. I also have a recurring nightmare about having to program with someone who has an inflated view of their own abilities : the know-it-all. Spending an hour or so arguing with some clown over the 3 lines of code we've actually managed to write isnt my idea of a good time. Tales from the Darkside: ---------------------------- I once worked on a project where one hotshot wanted to use XSLT transforms as opposed to managing the data inside a jsp. Spend two days arguing, destroying team spirit, and he quit rather than accept the lead architects decision. Missed the project deadline as I had to spend 4 weeks looking for a replecement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasmine Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 [color:"red"]Tales from the Darkside: ---------------------------- I once worked on a project where one hotshot wanted to use XSLT transforms as opposed to managing the data inside a jsp. Spend two days arguing, destroying team spirit, and he quit rather than accept the lead architects decision. Missed the project deadline as I had to spend 4 weeks looking for a replecement. [/color] I find that rather egoistic of some people to behave so. As a contractor we have clients who think they know better and we just document what we recommend and went along with decision. Believe me, I have been around long enough to see that the clients realize the decisions are mistakes!!! On the other side of the coin, it creates more work for contractors which can be good or bad depepnding how you look at it. On coding, if a place does not have standards, it is a free game as far as I am concern and have seen many programmers do their own things for job securities. Hubby and I have been in a couple of places where we were told that our style of programming was too complicated, they did not understand it, so we adjusted IT has a long way to go on standards and procedures but many places start to realize how important the standards are now. :: Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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