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

[John Dallman]

In article <uic1su$mief$1 at dont-email.me>, arne at vajhoej.dk (Arne Vajhøj)
wrote:

> On 11/6/2023 8:07 AM, bill wrote:
> > On 11/6/2023 5:58 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> >> They should teach methods, principles, concepts, ideas.
> > They teach that, too, but without detailed knowledge of a language
> > it really doesn't do much for the student.
> They need a language to write code to see the principles
> applied.
> 
> To really understand what is general and what is specific
> for the language they need more than one language.

Absolutely. 

> I would expect a CS degree to give knowledge of about 3-5
> languages.

At a minimum. 

> Most learn Python and Java today. But other languages are
> seen: OCAML, Haskell, C#, C++, C, PHP, JavaScript etc..
> 
> After that they should be able to learn new languages.

My computing degree was 1980-83, and in the first two years we did:

Pascal, VML (an idealised assembly language for a simulated machine),
Algol 68, 8080 assembler, Fortran and COBOL. There were plenty of other
languages available, and learning one as part of a particular course was
routine. I'd learned some Basic at high school, and taught myself more,
plus 6502 assembler, on a home computer I bought while a student. 

In employment and hobby projects, I've learned CORAL 66, C, 8086
assembler, Perl, 30386 assembler, C++, the C-based domain-specific
language my current employer uses, several installer scripting languages
and application macro languages, x86-64 assembler, SPARC assembler, UNIX
shell scripting, Python and ARM64 assembler. 

> If you hire someone with work experience then you may decide to
> go for someone with experience in the languages and frameworks to
> be used. After all you may need someone to teach those without that
> experience if such skills are not present already in the org.
> 
> But if you hire someone right out of college, then it is really
> sub-optimal to hire based on their skills in the specific
> languages and frameworks. The level is not that high anyway and
> it will only take a few months for those without those skills
> to catch up. So it is really about hiring those that are
> generally good.

Because my employer does something quite specialised, in a domain-
specific language, we're happy to hire people with no programming
experience if they're fast learners. "Numerate and fast learners" are the
primary hiring criteria, and HR don't get to argue. We've found that it
is much faster and more effective to teach mathematicians programming
than to take business IT programmers and teach them mathematical
modelling. 

John