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

[Dan Cross]

In article <kqqluvF6p35U3 at mid.individual.net>,
bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>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.

I don't think academia cares whether COBOL succeeds (whatever
that means) or fails.  I think academia is more concerned with
research, and making the most of their finite time teaching
students to give them as much of the continually-expanding field
as possible.

>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.

There are at least two logical fallacies here; first, that your
experience with a sample set size of one extends to anything
else.

Second, it's a false dichotomy to assert that, because your
university is not teaching students COBOL that it is not
"preparing their students for the world after graduation."

In particular, it may be the case that some number of students
can get a good job slinging COBOL after they graduate; it is
also likely that those same students can get a different jobs
that pay equally well.  It is also likely true that other
students can similarly get other jobs.  That is, the false
dichotomy is the apparant assumption that not getting the COBOL 
job somehow means they don't have a job at all; you've shared
no evidence that would show that.

>> 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?

Why do you think they would learn this better in a CS undergrad
program than anywhere else?

The important thing I would like to see from students who've
gone through a CS undergraduate education is familiarity with
basic theory and concepts (algorithms; data structures; basic
complexity theory and the ability to apply that to working
code), and exposure to a smattering of research topics to give
them an indication that there is a bigger world out there.
Beyond that?  I could care less if they learn a particular
language as a student.  Is it really that hard for a competent
person to pick up COBOL?

>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!!)

Honestly?  This sounds more like a process failure than anything
else.  Who reviewed their code?  What kind of change management
systems are in place to submit to the production repository and
go through the testing pipeline to get into prod?

	- Dan C.