[Info-vax] And another one bites the dust....

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/15/2022 10:43 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 2/15/22 09:56, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 2/15/2022 8:04 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> National Computing Group
>>> West Mifflin, PA
>>>
>>> Document, plan and execute the modernization of Fortran applications 
>>> running on OpenVMS systems to a virtualized Windows Server environment.
>>> --------
>>>
>>> Does anyone watch for these postings and then try to convince them to
>>> not move away from VMS?   Or at least find out why they are moving.
>>
>> I found the ad.
>>
>> And what is puzzling me is that it is not clear whether
>> they will keep Fortran or not.
>>
>> <quote>
>> Document and migrate systems currently running Visual Basic, and older 
>> Java code to a modern .Net framework
>> Document, plan and execute the modernization of Fortran applications 
>> running on OpenVMS systems to a virtualized Windows Server environment.
>> ...
>> Software Engineer / Developer with minimum of 1-2 years of experience 
>> developing in Java, C, and C#. Knowledge of the Visual Studio IDE. 
>> Comfortable with both Linux/Unix and Windows environments.
>>
>> Must be willing to work with OpenVMS and FOTRAN.
>>
>> Development experience with FORTRAN, .Net Core or SignalR a plus
>>
>> Experience with Tableau a plus
>>
>> Experience with SQL and Oracle a plus
>> ...
>> Experience:
>>
>>      Java: 3 years (Required)
>>      C#: 1 year (Required)
>> </quote>
>>
>> It seems pretty clear that client side is changing from
>> VB6 and Java (AWT or Swing) desktop apps on Windows to
>> browser and an ASP.NET web app on Windows.
>>
>> Server side is moving from Fortran on VMS to something
>> on Windows. But what is something? Not mentioning new language
>> points to keeping Fortran. But Fortran is really niche on
>> Windows and there is little emphasis on Fortran skills
>> in the ad. If I were to hire someone to port Fortran code
>> from VMS to Windows then I would insist on someone
>> with Fortran skills, but if porting from Fortran on VMS to
>> something else (like C# or Java) on Windows, then Fortran
>> skills are not quite as important.
> 
> They are if he needs to be able to understand Fortran to
> do the port.   :-)

You would not translate Fortran code to C#/Java/whatever code 1:1,
so the person would just need to understand what the code does.

Fortran (at least up to 77!) is not a difficult language
to understand.

For reasonable nice Fortran then I would expect a developer
without Fortran experience to be able to deduct in and
out arguments, the main flow and any IO done.

Arne