[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Arne Vajhøj
> via Info-vax
> Sent: December 23, 2018 9:44 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?
> 
> On 12/23/2018 9:34 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > On 12/18/2018 12:28 AM, Dave Froble wrote:
> >> On 12/17/2018 2:49 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> >>>  So, what happened
> >>> to all of those COBOL, Fortran and Pascal jobs?
> >>
> >> I can tell you what happened to some of the people.
> >>
> >> Upon seeing and hearing all the negative things about VMS, some
> >> figured the ship was sinking, or would sink, and decided to bail out.
> >> They moved to WEENDOZE, or Unix, or whatever they thought would last
> >> for a while.
> >>
> >> It wasn't in many cases that their jobs were actually going away,
> >> it's that they drank the kool aid and believed the jobs would go
> >> away, and wanted to move on before things got critical.
> >>
> >> I'm guessing that things didn't get so critical, but, those people
> >> were gone, and if they'd go, then most surely would not come back.
> >> So, then you had the "it's hard to find people to work on VMS".
> >>
> >> This is a classic example of self fulfilling prophecy.
> >>
> >> Funny thing is, some most likely would have finished their working
> >> years on VMS, if they hadn't left.
> >
> > I actually agree with you.
> >
> > Way too many companies jump ship way too soon ending up doing multiple
> > migrations because they picked the wrong technology when they were in
> > a hurry.
> >
> > And if people switched just for job security, then they may very well
> > got disappointed. The new stuff often disappeared faster than the old
> > stuff.
> 
> Legacy vs new stuff:
> 
> https://dilbert.com/strip/2017-02-23
> 
> :-)
> 
> Arne

My favourite on this topic:

<http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Jurassic-Programmers->
"It hadn't always been that way. About six months earlier, the dinosaurs occupied the nicer offices. They were responsible for maintaining -- some, originally building -- InsuraCorp's 25-year-old cash-cow product. Though it worked very well, the system ran on the VMS operating system and was written in the now-forgotten Digital Interactive Business Oriented Language (DIBOL), rendering it accessible only through a text-based terminal emulator. In the age of the Web, and competitors with a more modern product, customers demanded more.

InsuraCorp vowed to hire a new team of sharp-minded programmers to completely rewrite the software as a Windows application using VisualBasic.NET. This was the project Russ was brought on for, albeit several months late. With years of Windows and .NET-based development experience, Russ would be a great fit for the rock stars. However, he had some background in COBOL, so his manager wanted him to "spend some time" with the dinosaurs."

Read link to see how this all turned out ..

😊


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com