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From: Pete Dashwood on 24 Jan 2010 18:24
Alistair wrote:
> On Jan 23, 11:20 pm, docdw...(a)panix.com () wrote:
>> In article <4b5a683a$0$12422$bbae4...(a)news.suddenlink.net>,
>>
>> Paul <paul-nospamatall.rauler...(a)mac.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I guess it is just a consequence of age, but I sure have found
>>> myself far less tolerant of incompetence and foolishness lately.
>>> Like especially the last three or four months. :)
>>
>>> At work, I find myself having to remind myself that the most people
>>> take forever to get to a point, or to see something that is really
>>> obvious to me. Usually because it took me a week to figure it out
>>> for myself the first time.
>>
>> First, as my Sainted Paternal Grandfather - may he sleep with the
>> angels! - used to say, 'Never use yourself as a comparative...
>> you'll only be disappointed.'
>>
>> Second... in most instances I'd say it did not take you 'a week to
>> figure it out for (your)self the first time', I'd say it took your
>> preceding lifetime of being exposure to stuff, learning how to
>> form/see relationships between stuff and then calling that result
>> 'figuring it out'. We not only stand on the shoulders of preceding
>> giants... we also stretch and tilt our heads and turn things
>> inside-out, according to our experiences and (dare I invoke it)
>> temperments.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Ah well, I long for the days when I could just sit and write COBOL
>>> and CICS programs.
>>
>> Do you long for the days of 'you guys start coding while I find out
>> what the user really wants' or 'Well, that's nice... but what'd be
>> Really Neat is if we could carry last year's period-equivalent
>> totals someplace, you can fit that into 131 columns' or 'Hey, it's
>> 2:am and the Prod run blew up with a DISPLAY of 'Call Programming'
>> or 'I know that's what I told you but it's not what I want!'?
>>
>> Those, in my experience, are just as much a part of humping code as
>> the the delight of 'Hey... it can work if I just work check through
>> the field character-by-character not forwards but *backwards*...' or
>> 'I can cut the delay for the SORT by checking the range, writing the
>> records to VIO and pulling them back in only if the PARM contains an
>> 'S' or 'I can increment that alpha by a REDEFINES into a binary,
>> adding 1 and 88'ing for A-H, I-R and S-Z so the only hardcode test
>> is for a Z at the top of the routine'.
>>
>>> It was fun then. Perhaps not as well paying, but fun.
>>
>> I recall being taught that Aeschylus said 'Great hardships make for
>> later entertainments'... and after a few decades of coming up with
>> solutions there aren't as many New Problems I see, true, but the
>> pay's enough to take care of my needs and wants to the point where
>> my accountant, annually, says 'Can't you come up with some more
>> deductions anywhere?'
>>
>>> Any of you guys notice the same thing?
>>
>> I barely know what *I* notice, let alone anyone else... but as I've
>> been saying for a few decades 'Life is Good... and It just keeps
>> Getting Better'. I didn't live in a house with a dog, ever, until I
>> got my pug, Killer... and now I don't know how I managed to sleep
>> without a nightly snore-serenade.
>>
>> DD
>
> You may knock snoring but the act of snoring loudly saved the life of
> one hostage in the Iranian embassy siege in London (1985?). The man's
> snoring was so loud that it disturbed the captors and other hostages
> so he was released early.

Pretty high risk though... they might just as easily have shot him...(I can
hear women all round the world applauding... :-))

Pete.

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


From: Anonymous on 25 Jan 2010 08:42
In article <4ac3daf8-6ea7-480c-aa50-7272ad74b61c(a)a6g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair(a)ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Jan 23, 11:20?pm, docdw...(a)panix.com () wrote:

[snip]

>> I barely know what *I* notice, let alone anyone else... but as I've been
>> saying for a few decades 'Life is Good... and It just keeps Getting
>> Better'. ?I didn't live in a house with a dog, ever, until I got my pug,
>> Killer... and now I don't know how I managed to sleep without a nightly
>> snore-serenade.
>
>You may knock snoring but the act of snoring loudly saved the life of
>one hostage in the Iranian embassy siege in London (1985?). The man's
>snoring was so loud that it disturbed the captors and other hostages
>so he was released early.

I don't believeI 'knocked snoring', Mr Maclean... quite the reverse, I
wondered how I managed (prior to obtaining Killer) that I managed to sleep
without it. As for your anecdote... it can be matched with one from the
Oldene Dayse of the American West, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Hardin#Second_encounter_with_.22Wild_Bill.22_Hickok>,
paragraph 2, sentences 1 and 2.

(This incident earned Mr Hardin the description of 'the gunfighter so mean
he once shot a man to death for snoring too loudly'.)

DD

From: Howard Brazee on 25 Jan 2010 10:35
On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:08:42 -0600, Paul
<paul-nospamatall.raulerson(a)mac.com> wrote:

>Ah well, I long for the days when I could just sit and write COBOL and
>CICS programs.
>It was fun then. Perhaps not as well paying, but fun.

One trouble is that nowadays, everything impacts everything. Despite
OO isolation, we find that some incompetent code somewhere else either
impacts our work now, or will with some future upgrade.

We are much more vulnerable to what others do wrong.

Nowadays, a much higher percentage of programmers are support
programmers instead of applications programmers. And everything
they do impacts programming.

Companies tend to buy packages, then modify them to fit their needs.
They usually say that their goal is to keep such modifications as
little as possible, but there is always creep. Then the package has
some upgrades, and programmers spend a lot of time comparing code to
get those upgrades in without breaking the modifications.

The applications programming becomes less and less part of the job,
and making sure different components aren't stepping on others is more
of the job.

So we beg for competence everywhere else, and long for the days when
we predominately created & upgraded applications.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison
From: Howard Brazee on 25 Jan 2010 10:38
Anybody read today's Brewster Rockit:Space Guy?


http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/2010/01/25/

Good things companies aren't *really* like that..., right?

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison
From: Howard Brazee on 25 Jan 2010 10:39
On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:24:09 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:

>> You may knock snoring but the act of snoring loudly saved the life of
>> one hostage in the Iranian embassy siege in London (1985?). The man's
>> snoring was so loud that it disturbed the captors and other hostages
>> so he was released early.
>
>Pretty high risk though... they might just as easily have shot him...(I can
>hear women all round the world applauding... :-))

My wife can nudge me to stop me - the reverse doesn't work.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison
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