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

[bill]

On 11/5/2023 4:50 PM, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <ui8nnq$995$1 at reader2.panix.com>,
> cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
> 
>> If these organizations are so eager to hire programmers with
>> COBOL and Fortran experience, why don't they take charge of the
>> situation and provide the experience themselves?
> 
> Management short-terminism, I think.

Maybe, to some extent.

But I provided an example of academia doing all it could to make the
effort fail.  And I say again, I really doubt my University is somehow
unique.  If the professors at my University take action to quash COBOL
I have to believe others are doing it to.  It has been a  long time
since the academics decided rather than preparing their students for
the world after graduation they preferred to steer them in another
direction.

> 
> Incidentally, the situation for Fortran is rather different from COBOL
> and PL/I. Academic computer scientists don't usually touch it, but
> physicists, computational chemists and the like still use it heavily. So
> there are still people coming onto the job market who know it.

Yes, but how well (and I don't mean syntax)?  Who is teaching them?
If they are not getting this training from CS Departments are they
getting any of the fundamentals or just syntax?

Some of the worst business programs I ever had to work with were in
Fortran and written by engineering faculty who needed something to do
during the summer.

Note, I said some of the worst.  The worst was COBOL written by
government contractors who obviously had no real COBOL experience
and definitely no supervision.  But then, low bidder and all that.
(Think about it.  Budget tracking with 6 figure sums and all the
intermediate results were unsigned!!)

bill