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

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 2/15/22 11:08, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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 languag > 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.

If only there was "reasonable nice Fortran".  I used to have
to maintain a half dozen business applications written in
Fortran 66 by bored engineers who needed someting to keep
them busy during the summer off-season at a college.  Each
several  thousand lines long.

bill