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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/5/2023 1:35 PM, bill wrote:
> On 11/5/2023 1:18 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 11/5/2023 1:03 PM, abrsvc wrote:
>>> On Sunday, November 5, 2023 at 12:47:21 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> As a result the demand is small.
>>>>
>>>> It is not zero but despite the frequent "we have a problem"
>>>> announcements, then it seems like they can keep and hire+train the
>>>> people they need for maintenance.
>>
>>> The demand these days is a little different as well.
>>>
>>> I am currently working with 2 clients using PL/I code.  They no
>>> longer have PL/I expertise onsite and don't know how to modify the
>>> existing code in one case, and don't know what the code does in the
>>> other case.  Nice work for me, but it would be nice if there were
>>> resources for such tasks more readily available...
>>
>> These cases exist.
>>
>> And you are probably not the only consultant doing that
>> type of work.
> 
> True, but those numbers are going down, too.
> 
>> But that does mean that it would make sense for colleges
>> to spew out hundreds or thousands of people with solid
>> PL/I skills.
> 
> No one says hundreds of thousands.  But if 1% of CS and CIS
> students were offered a course in COBOL or Fortran or PL/I
> it would provide a pool of about 2000 candidates a year.  A
> little better than 0.

Maybe some should.

I expect it to have absolutely zero impact on the industry
(those using those languages do so because they have to - not
because they want to), but I believe in knowing classics.

Just like someone studying human languages should learn
latin and/or greek, then someone studying computer
languages should learn Fortran and/or Cobol (or maybe
PL/I or Ada or Pascal/Modula-2 there are plenty of
classical languages).


Arne