[Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?

[Dave Froble]

On 12/27/2018 5:05 PM, Kerry Main wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Bill
>> Gunshannon via Info-vax
>> Sent: December 27, 2018 8:30 AM
>> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
>> Cc: Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Opportunity for VSI?
>>
>> On 12/27/18 7:53 AM, Kerry Main wrote:
>>>> -----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 ..
>>>
>>> 😊
>>
>> Cute story, but they miss-spelled MVS.  :-)
>>
>> bill
>>
>
> Reminds me of an old saying that the OS platforms that had the best and most stable clustering had the same 3 letters.
>
>   (yes, both are A-A, shared disk cluster strategies)

A friend from way back ended up working for one of those medical 
organizations, you know, one that buys up all the local hospitals to 
dominate the market.

Anyway, there was the idea of upgrading the applications, and having a 
single system for all the hospitals.  Now, true to the peter principal, 
lots of people with responsibility, no brains, and lots of pre-conceived 
notions.

At one of the decision meetings, with nothing reasonable happening, Joe 
finally gets up and tells everyone, "look, the two best solutions for 
our applications are the two solutions none of you want".  For some 
reason the idiots didn't want AIX or VMS, the two platforms that the 
applications were supported upon.

I forget whatever they ended up doing.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
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