[Info-vax] OpenVMS async I/O, fast vs. slow

[Dan Cross]

In article <kqq3l0F6p35U1 at mid.individual.net>,
bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 11/5/2023 12:37 PM, John Dallman wrote:
>> In article <kqpsd9F6p36U1 at mid.individual.net>, bill.gunshannon at gmail.com
>> (bill) wrote:
>> 
>>> I really wish trade schools would step up to the plate and start
>>> teaching IT and in particular thing like COBOL, Fortran and PL/I.
>>> They are not going away.
>> 
>> However, recruiting young people onto those courses, rather than ones in
>> mobile app creation, might be quite hard. 
>
>Not every student studying computers is a budding computer scientist.
>Most schools with CS programs also have CIS programs and a  lot of
>students go that route.
>
>>                                            You'd also need relevant
>> compilers, operating systems and hardware.
>
>Just like VMS has a student program IBM and UNISYS, the two biggest
>mainframers left, offer programs for people to familiarize with their
>world.  There are also Open Source COBOL and Fortran systems available.
>PL/i being the red headed step child. (As a side note, the recent 
>edition of the CACM has an article that claims IBM intended PL/I to
>take over the computing world from the likes of COBOL, Fortran and
>ALGOL.  Funny considering that they kept it hidden in their corporate
>bowels for so long.)
>
>> 
>> I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but if it was easy, it might well
>> already be happening.
>
>The problem goes back to marketing.  Academia has held it down for so
>long that people don't know about it.

You've said this before, but it's honestly kind of a silly thing
to say: Academia isn't "holding [COBOL] down" by not teaching
it, but rather, they've got a limited amount of time to
familiarize students with an ever-expanding field.  The blunt
reality is that most new graduates will never program in COBOL,
regardless of whether insurers and financial services firms
continue to use it in highly vertical applications: this is not
due to some nefarious plot on the part of academics, it's due to
larger industry trends.  There is thus little incentive to teach
it, and so it (correctly) falls very far down on the list of
priorities.

Moreover, it's a highly specialized, vertical skill: if someone
who has graduated a 4-year program in CS or CIS or MIS or
whatever can't pick it up in relatively short order, then that's
the real problem.  Universities should be teaching techniques,
not technologies.  Same with Fortran, frankly.

>It will take a sell but right now 
>it is hard to find the right person to sell it.  Maybe this whole loan
>debt thing will finally provide the push it needs.

That's your real problem.  No one is selling your favorite
technologies to the younger generation, and the players in the
mainframe space make it sort of ridiculously hard to casually
gain exposure.

	- Dan C.