10 ms·

I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't mov

I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized. But. A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's been familiar with their particular pile of toxic waste for at least four years at minimum. They're asking for people with 4+ years of COBOL, and JCL (ok, fine), and DB2, and VSAM, and "SDLC" (proto-waterfall), and, oh yeah, a four-year degree. Heck, there's a posting asking for somebody to draw diagrams and document their existing processes, and for that they expect you to have 10 years of COBOL experience. Okay then. This is not yet a mess that they're motivated enough to fix.

_bxg1 7y ago
Or they, like many non-technical organizations, have no idea how to hire programmers. Could be worth a shot; even at regular companies they often over-state resume requirements.
- meow1032 7y ago
  As someone who works with a lot of state IT people, if they don't know how to hire programmers, they probably don't know how to manage programmers. In a bureaucracy, if the administrators are making these kinds of unrealistic hiring demands in a crisis, it probably means that the administrators outrank all programmers and don't trust them to make their own decisions. This is not an environment to work in.
  - neaanopri 7y ago
    This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.
    - renewiltord 7y ago
      Did you apply? I think it would be interesting to hear the story of what it looks like inside if you decide to work with them.
    - BiteCode_dev 7y ago
      Problem is, that's how they get away with everything. They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess. Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's virtual. And IT is always exaggerating anyway. Now it does bite them back, and do they take responsibility ? No. They ask for competent people to have mercy and save the day because the situation is dire. Because this is special this time, unlike the other times. This is completely not like with the health care system that never got fixed and now the medical personal is paying for it so that the people don't suffer as much from this mismanagement. They will not pay more. They will no fix anything. They will not respect you more, change the way things are done, or take any responsibility for this. And in fact they will probably guilt trip you into give up your health to overwork on this with less resources and for less pay because it's an emergency. A friend of mine works in an hospital right now. She has been at work for 15 days straight. They already told her she won't get paid for the days she was not supposed to work but did. Then as a final fuck you, if this turns out ok, if the catastrophe is avoided, they will get the reward. The nurses or the programmers ? They will be forgotten in a week. Nothing will change. But for the mismanagers, their superior will thank them for managing this situation well. They may even get promoted and have more responsibility. So you have the choice between saving the money of poor people now and reinforcing the suck of the whole system, of letting people suffer for a chance of a redo and purging the ones that lead to this. This is a terrible choice to have to make. Especially since we have the empathy to make us discuss this, while clearly they don't.
      - KhoomeiK 7y ago
        Getting Atlas Shrugged vibes. Lots of parallels with this situation actually.
  - d3ad1ysp0rk 7y ago
    I would normally agree, but emergencies can create opportunities for improvements in the process. See healthcare.gov for example.
    - Frost1x 7y ago
      "Chaos is a ladder" though it didn't turn out so well for that fictional character, his assessment wasn't wrong.
- siruncledrew 7y ago
  Or maybe that’s their way of aiming high to land lower when that particular assortment of requirements isn’t yielding them any best-case options.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Hell most technical organizations have no idea how to hire programmers.
- tuesday20 7y ago
  So what if they don’t know how to hire programmers? All they have to do is hire someone who has had engineering leadership role/experience and let them hire programmers, isn’t it? Isn’t it easier to verify someone’s leadership credentials than COBOL skills?
  - giaour 7y ago
    Most government hiring does not work like that. "HR Specialists" decide if incoming applicants are qualified, and the hiring manager has little or nothing to do with it.
    - jeromegv 7y ago
      Lots of people are giving up before even trying.
      - antonvs 7y ago
        States have done this to themselves. They can't expect people not to treat them warily just because they've suddenly discovered that their inattention to their own problems has consequences.
- Cobol78 7y ago
  Yes, they hired a 24 year old college grad into personnel and she/he copied some old specs used by companies that wanted to bring in H1b programmers from off-shore. The job specs were 40 lines long and pay was $60,000 a year for 10 years experience. Then there were the places that brought in consultants that were doing a big rewrite, ignored the local staff and impressed management with their dark blue suits and white shirts, and left 6 years later without the project done. During that time the best of their own programmers left and they were left with the dregs and those a few years from retirement. Thought about doing this but I remember how we were treated. I left a job like that in Texas, worked in a shop in Connecticut with a room full of empty cubicles, and one very old guy and one new hire who knew Access. Even the Director of MIS was being cut there but allowed to stay a few more months to apply for other jobs without saying he was unemployed. I left.
quaquaqua1 7y ago
Just apply. There is no penalty for applying. If you want work, they definitely will at least talk to you.
cvhashim 7y ago
Like the other guy said, they're probably just listing their ideal candidate and not what the job may actually require
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Do they mean that SDLC? Or do they mean "synchronous data link control"?
- Zenst 7y ago
  Nope - http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileLifecycle.html http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileLifecycle.html Though I would of prefered your flavour as way more fun and less admin work overheads.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    And the very fact that you refer to "admin work overheads" in something claiming to be "agile" indicates that it's Agile(TM), not actual agile. (Though I got that idea very quickly from your link, as well...)
    - Zenst 7y ago
      Yes, naming of projects was one of the most fun aspects in projects. Seen that play out in many ways, often case of thinking of what you wanted and working out some acronym or reason to go with that. One team the project manger was a fan of the TV show BILKO, so the new invoiceing system became called that once a passable acronym was worked out. Was something like Billing and Invoicing ...was so long ago but was clever and worked. Then their was the buzzword period and marketing departments, so would get whole rafts of things with Rapid as a prefix and the irony played out. Still, maintenance is the biggest cost of any code that has lived so long, so with that such systems overall may well be agile, you just smooth out the pain over time in a more manageable way.
Zenst 7y ago
I can tick the 10+ years COBOL box nicely, though that was 30+ years ago and with that, somebody with 1-3 years COBOL would be more effective than somebody as myself. Still, in an era of movie superheroes, who knew that having 10+ years upon your CV would enable you to go, step aside good citizens, for I shall save you. COBOL man to the rescue.
- LeoTinnitus 7y ago
  Everytime I see COBOL, I always think of Newman from Jurassic Park and imagine that is a stereotypical COBOL programmer haha! If you see any bosses with a weird scarf, back away cause they may spit corona-acid in your face!
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    Newman is some sort of Pascal programmer https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/28030/source-code-on-nedrys-workstation-real-programming-language-s https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/28030/source-code...
  - DrScump 7y ago
    That film's horrible misrepresentation of UNIX almost ruined it for me.
    - agildehaus 7y ago
      How exactly? Versus something like CSI, Jurassic Park got a lot of things right. The computers used were real SGI SPARCStations and they had a bunch of Thinking Machines CM-5s for gene sequencing in the background shots. I believe all of the on-screen shots were done with real Irix software (including the scene where they locked the doors, which was done using a real IRIX file manager called "fsn"). Sure it was given the Hollywood treatment, but it'd be pretty boring if they didn't.
      - DonHopkins 7y ago
        Sun made SPARCstations, not SGI, who used MIPS, not SPARC, and just called them workstations. Then there was the SGI Indy, which was an SGI Indigo without the go. ;) The 3d desktop file system navigator software running on the SGI workstation was actually a thing that SGI shipped, by Joel Sherrill <joel@sgi.com>, called SGI Fusion, or FSN! Original URL of binary distribution: ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/fsn/fsn.tar.Z Now archived at: ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/unix/sgi/bin/fsn.tar.Z https://github.com/jdm7dv/3d-file-system-navigator/blob/master/README.txt https://github.com/jdm7dv/3d-file-system-navigator/blob/mast... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager) >File System Navigator (fsn; pronounced "fusion") is an experimental application to view a file system in 3D, made by SGI for IRIX systems. >Even though it was never developed to a fully functional file manager, it gained some fame after appearing in the movie Jurassic Park in 1993. In a scene in the film, the character Lex Murphy, played by Ariana Richards, finds a computer displaying the interface. She exclaims "It's a UNIX system! I know this!" and proceeds to restart the building's access control system, locking the control room's doors. After the release of the film, some perceived the visualization as an example of media misrepresentation of computers, citing the computer game-like display as being an unrealistic Hollywood mockup. FSN – the IRIX 3D file system tool from Jurassic Park http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool-from-jurassic-park/ http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool... SGI Fusion - FSN 3d File System Navigator SGI File System Navigator, otherwise known as Fusion. Running on IRIX 6.5 on an Octane. If you have an SGI, a binary of this program is available at ftp.sgi.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ It's a unix system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxIPcbmo1_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxIPcbmo1_U "Indigo without the go." -Mark Hughes (?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEcw_oTKTa0?t=6m8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEcw_oTKTa0?t=6m8s https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341455 Software Usability II http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassi...
dbcurtis 7y ago
> JCL ERROR IN OR NEAR CARD 1 COLUMN 1 0C7 ABEND ABORT CORE DUMP FOLLOWS: .... About the only other thing I remember is: //SYSIN DD * No. Thank. You.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- DrScump 7y ago
  If you get an S0C7, your JCL is probably fine (else you wouldn't get far enough to get a data exception). JCL is just another scripting language. I found it fun. I did all the JCL for my group's production jobs and commented the hell out of the esoteric issues to help Operations triage things. A small, well-planned effort prevented a crapload of, well, crap.
  - skissane 7y ago
    > JCL is just another scripting language One feature of JCL which I think is cool, is that whereas on Unix processes inherit file descriptors which are numeric only (and hence few applications know what to do with anything other than FDs 0-2), in JCL you instead have DDNAMEs which are 1 to 8 characters. I think, if Unix had alphabetic names for inherited streams rather than just numbers, you might see more Unix programs supporting more than three inherited streams. Another feature I think is cool is catalogs. A database mapping dataset names (file paths basically) to the filesystem volume (disk or tape) on which the file lives. You can move a file to another disk or to tape without changing its name/path. (Strictly speaking both of these are features of the MVS operating system as a whole, not just JCL per se, but JCL is one of the main interfaces to them.)
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    JCL is certainly not any worse than bash.
downvoteme1 7y ago
Don’t be surprised if this position then goes to an H1B contractor though. If enough anericans who have this knowledge do not apply because they - Hate the tech - Can’t provide their feedback to improve the system - Don’t like the salary offered even if’s greater than their current unemployment income, then is it for an offshore company to come in and fill that gap.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rwallace 7y ago
  I don't think the point is that Americans should consider themselves too good for the COBOL jobs. The point is that the organization has stated that it will refuse to hire many people who would be willing and able to do the jobs.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    People love to attribute bad faith into a government just trying to get their shit together in the middle of an emergency. Where and when have they refused?
- AllanHoustonSt 7y ago
  Which popular H1B source countries teach COBOL? I feel like the advent of cheap offshore programming came well after the decline of COBOL. Though my sense of history can very well be off.
  - ethanwillis 7y ago
    They can just lie about experience can they not?
  - bencollier49 7y ago
    A lot of Indian degree courses teach COBOL for exactly this reason.
  - 7y ago
diek 7y ago
SDLC is often used to emphasize that you need to be familiar with the full "Software Development Lifecycle". When I read SDLC I just assume they mean, "you need to be able to take a project from concept to deployment (including documentation for supporting it long term)". Depending on org structures, a lot of engineers only work on one part of that pipeline throughout their career.
- burfog 7y ago
  Nah, this is clearly an IBM mainframe shop. SDLC is a layer 2 network protocol in the SNA stack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control
burfog 7y ago
They aren't asking for so much. They want: 1. understanding the language (COBOL) 2. IBM mainframe experience (JCL, DB2, VSAM, SDLC) 3. credentialed (4-year degree) Note that SDLC is a layer 2 network protocol in the SNA stack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control
- godzillabrennus 7y ago
  3.) is what gets me... Why do you need to pay a college to get a piece of paper to enable someone to pay you for skills you otherwise posses?
  - kchr 7y ago
    I am not saying I agree with this system, but am assuming one of the reasons is that the hiring company see the credentials as a way to not gamble on whether you "are familiar" with a subject or actually has deep knowledge of core concepts taught along a planned syllabus.
  - burfog 7y ago
    You say you have skills. Everybody says that. Prove it. Assume the interviewer doesn't have time for a multi-day interview in which your skills are tested. Maybe the employer lost the last person with equivalent skills, so a non-technical interviewer is trying to find a replacement person.
    - invalidOrTaken 7y ago
      >You say you have skills. Everybody says that. Prove it. I feel like this is a game of chicken that FAANG can win, but NJ Unemployment Office (or whatever) cannot. The shortage isn't really cash. You could hire some bright high school students for cheap, and, given enough time, and half-supervision by an experienced dev (who doesn't even know COBOL), they could fix whatever bugs are ailing the system. You could hire a couple (again, COBOL-ignorant!) web devs at or above market rate, and they could also deliver a working system. It would take time, but they could do it. The actual shortage is management. They don't have anyone who'd be confident fixing things if said high school students screwed up. They don't have backups, or don't know how they work. It's unlikely they know what actually needs to be done. So what they actually need is a tech lead. But they think they just need "programmers," so they advertise for programmers (with inflated requirements, because they need them to actually be a lead) and the pay is commensurate for "programmers," rather than what they actually need.
DeathArrow 7y ago
Looks like they want a programmer to do the job of an entire IT department.
PappaPatat 7y ago
> I was sort of tempted to pursue this. For me the exact opposite. 15 years ago I removed any and all reverence to my history of COBOL because I was suddenly actively being contacted for COBOL coding jobs. Although I had a great time, as a starting coder, with COBOL jobs (transcoding COBOL to C at the time), I know one thing: ever ever again will I utter one like of COBOL code. There are still people making very decent money doing it, but the lockin to one particular source of work just does not sound like what I could bare.
microtherion 7y ago
> I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines In the mid-80s, my first year CS professor anticipated most us ending up "in the lead mines of COBOL programming" — it was commonly assumed that we'd never manage to get rid of the dominance of COBOL. Are references to mining common in the COBOL scene?
- tylerrobinson 7y ago
  I can’t tell if you are joking, but “the salt mines” is a rather common bit of workplace humor, at least in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining#Idiomatic_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining#Idiomatic_use
  - microtherion 7y ago
    Thanks! I genuinely was not aware of "salt mines" specifically, though I have come across mining references, and even made some myself, now that I think about it.
indymike 7y ago
Or they are fulfilling Rhett requirement to post the job publications when they are rehiring a specific person quickly.
IanS00 7y ago
4-year degree? So that rules out Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg. To get serious, they need to move HR aside. Many of the best techs from the '70s and 80s dropped out of college. What was called for back then was real-world experience, not slips of paper. I seem to spend most of my working life trying not to embarrass people with 4-year degrees who can't even spell things like "COBOL".
pelliphant 7y ago
dont really know anything about this particular case, but: Isn't it common for job applications like this to state what they "want", even if they know that it doesn't exist? (such as 3 years of experience with an 1 year old product). Then they just hire the person who gets the closest to what they want.

_bxg1 7y ago

Or they, like many non-technical organizations, have no idea how to hire programmers. Could be worth a shot; even at regular companies they often over-state resume requirements.

meow1032 7y ago
As someone who works with a lot of state IT people, if they don't know how to hire programmers, they probably don't know how to manage programmers. In a bureaucracy, if the administrators are making these kinds of unrealistic hiring demands in a crisis, it probably means that the administrators outrank all programmers and don't trust them to make their own decisions. This is not an environment to work in.
- neaanopri 7y ago
  This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.
  - renewiltord 7y ago
    Did you apply? I think it would be interesting to hear the story of what it looks like inside if you decide to work with them.
  - BiteCode_dev 7y ago
    Problem is, that's how they get away with everything. They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess. Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's virtual. And IT is always exaggerating anyway. Now it does bite them back, and do they take responsibility ? No. They ask for competent people to have mercy and save the day because the situation is dire. Because this is special this time, unlike the other times. This is completely not like with the health care system that never got fixed and now the medical personal is paying for it so that the people don't suffer as much from this mismanagement. They will not pay more. They will no fix anything. They will not respect you more, change the way things are done, or take any responsibility for this. And in fact they will probably guilt trip you into give up your health to overwork on this with less resources and for less pay because it's an emergency. A friend of mine works in an hospital right now. She has been at work for 15 days straight. They already told her she won't get paid for the days she was not supposed to work but did. Then as a final fuck you, if this turns out ok, if the catastrophe is avoided, they will get the reward. The nurses or the programmers ? They will be forgotten in a week. Nothing will change. But for the mismanagers, their superior will thank them for managing this situation well. They may even get promoted and have more responsibility. So you have the choice between saving the money of poor people now and reinforcing the suck of the whole system, of letting people suffer for a chance of a redo and purging the ones that lead to this. This is a terrible choice to have to make. Especially since we have the empathy to make us discuss this, while clearly they don't.
    - KhoomeiK 7y ago
      Getting Atlas Shrugged vibes. Lots of parallels with this situation actually.
- d3ad1ysp0rk 7y ago
  I would normally agree, but emergencies can create opportunities for improvements in the process. See healthcare.gov for example.
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    "Chaos is a ladder" though it didn't turn out so well for that fictional character, his assessment wasn't wrong.
siruncledrew 7y ago
Or maybe that’s their way of aiming high to land lower when that particular assortment of requirements isn’t yielding them any best-case options.
scarface74 7y ago
Hell most technical organizations have no idea how to hire programmers.
tuesday20 7y ago
So what if they don’t know how to hire programmers? All they have to do is hire someone who has had engineering leadership role/experience and let them hire programmers, isn’t it? Isn’t it easier to verify someone’s leadership credentials than COBOL skills?
- giaour 7y ago
  Most government hiring does not work like that. "HR Specialists" decide if incoming applicants are qualified, and the hiring manager has little or nothing to do with it.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    Lots of people are giving up before even trying.
    - antonvs 7y ago
      States have done this to themselves. They can't expect people not to treat them warily just because they've suddenly discovered that their inattention to their own problems has consequences.
Cobol78 7y ago
Yes, they hired a 24 year old college grad into personnel and she/he copied some old specs used by companies that wanted to bring in H1b programmers from off-shore. The job specs were 40 lines long and pay was $60,000 a year for 10 years experience. Then there were the places that brought in consultants that were doing a big rewrite, ignored the local staff and impressed management with their dark blue suits and white shirts, and left 6 years later without the project done. During that time the best of their own programmers left and they were left with the dregs and those a few years from retirement. Thought about doing this but I remember how we were treated. I left a job like that in Texas, worked in a shop in Connecticut with a room full of empty cubicles, and one very old guy and one new hire who knew Access. Even the Director of MIS was being cut there but allowed to stay a few more months to apply for other jobs without saying he was unemployed. I left.

quaquaqua1 7y ago

Just apply. There is no penalty for applying. If you want work, they definitely will at least talk to you.

cvhashim 7y ago

Like the other guy said, they're probably just listing their ideal candidate and not what the job may actually require

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Do they mean that SDLC? Or do they mean "synchronous data link control"?

Zenst 7y ago
Nope - http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileLifecycle.html http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileLifecycle.html Though I would of prefered your flavour as way more fun and less admin work overheads.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  And the very fact that you refer to "admin work overheads" in something claiming to be "agile" indicates that it's Agile(TM), not actual agile. (Though I got that idea very quickly from your link, as well...)
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Yes, naming of projects was one of the most fun aspects in projects. Seen that play out in many ways, often case of thinking of what you wanted and working out some acronym or reason to go with that. One team the project manger was a fan of the TV show BILKO, so the new invoiceing system became called that once a passable acronym was worked out. Was something like Billing and Invoicing ...was so long ago but was clever and worked. Then their was the buzzword period and marketing departments, so would get whole rafts of things with Rapid as a prefix and the irony played out. Still, maintenance is the biggest cost of any code that has lived so long, so with that such systems overall may well be agile, you just smooth out the pain over time in a more manageable way.

Zenst 7y ago

I can tick the 10+ years COBOL box nicely, though that was 30+ years ago and with that, somebody with 1-3 years COBOL would be more effective than somebody as myself. Still, in an era of movie superheroes, who knew that having 10+ years upon your CV would enable you to go, step aside good citizens, for I shall save you. COBOL man to the rescue.

LeoTinnitus 7y ago
Everytime I see COBOL, I always think of Newman from Jurassic Park and imagine that is a stereotypical COBOL programmer haha! If you see any bosses with a weird scarf, back away cause they may spit corona-acid in your face!
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  Newman is some sort of Pascal programmer https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/28030/source-code-on-nedrys-workstation-real-programming-language-s https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/28030/source-code...
- DrScump 7y ago
  That film's horrible misrepresentation of UNIX almost ruined it for me.
  - agildehaus 7y ago
    How exactly? Versus something like CSI, Jurassic Park got a lot of things right. The computers used were real SGI SPARCStations and they had a bunch of Thinking Machines CM-5s for gene sequencing in the background shots. I believe all of the on-screen shots were done with real Irix software (including the scene where they locked the doors, which was done using a real IRIX file manager called "fsn"). Sure it was given the Hollywood treatment, but it'd be pretty boring if they didn't.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      Sun made SPARCstations, not SGI, who used MIPS, not SPARC, and just called them workstations. Then there was the SGI Indy, which was an SGI Indigo without the go. ;) The 3d desktop file system navigator software running on the SGI workstation was actually a thing that SGI shipped, by Joel Sherrill <joel@sgi.com>, called SGI Fusion, or FSN! Original URL of binary distribution: ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/fsn/fsn.tar.Z Now archived at: ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/unix/sgi/bin/fsn.tar.Z https://github.com/jdm7dv/3d-file-system-navigator/blob/master/README.txt https://github.com/jdm7dv/3d-file-system-navigator/blob/mast... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager) >File System Navigator (fsn; pronounced "fusion") is an experimental application to view a file system in 3D, made by SGI for IRIX systems. >Even though it was never developed to a fully functional file manager, it gained some fame after appearing in the movie Jurassic Park in 1993. In a scene in the film, the character Lex Murphy, played by Ariana Richards, finds a computer displaying the interface. She exclaims "It's a UNIX system! I know this!" and proceeds to restart the building's access control system, locking the control room's doors. After the release of the film, some perceived the visualization as an example of media misrepresentation of computers, citing the computer game-like display as being an unrealistic Hollywood mockup. FSN – the IRIX 3D file system tool from Jurassic Park http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool-from-jurassic-park/ http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool... SGI Fusion - FSN 3d File System Navigator SGI File System Navigator, otherwise known as Fusion. Running on IRIX 6.5 on an Octane. If you have an SGI, a binary of this program is available at ftp.sgi.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ It's a unix system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxIPcbmo1_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxIPcbmo1_U "Indigo without the go." -Mark Hughes (?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEcw_oTKTa0?t=6m8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEcw_oTKTa0?t=6m8s https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341455 Software Usability II http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassi...

dbcurtis 7y ago

> JCL ERROR IN OR NEAR CARD 1 COLUMN 1 0C7 ABEND ABORT CORE DUMP FOLLOWS: .... About the only other thing I remember is: //SYSIN DD * No. Thank. You.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DrScump 7y ago
If you get an S0C7, your JCL is probably fine (else you wouldn't get far enough to get a data exception). JCL is just another scripting language. I found it fun. I did all the JCL for my group's production jobs and commented the hell out of the esoteric issues to help Operations triage things. A small, well-planned effort prevented a crapload of, well, crap.
- skissane 7y ago
  > JCL is just another scripting language One feature of JCL which I think is cool, is that whereas on Unix processes inherit file descriptors which are numeric only (and hence few applications know what to do with anything other than FDs 0-2), in JCL you instead have DDNAMEs which are 1 to 8 characters. I think, if Unix had alphabetic names for inherited streams rather than just numbers, you might see more Unix programs supporting more than three inherited streams. Another feature I think is cool is catalogs. A database mapping dataset names (file paths basically) to the filesystem volume (disk or tape) on which the file lives. You can move a file to another disk or to tape without changing its name/path. (Strictly speaking both of these are features of the MVS operating system as a whole, not just JCL per se, but JCL is one of the main interfaces to them.)
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  JCL is certainly not any worse than bash.

downvoteme1 7y ago

Don’t be surprised if this position then goes to an H1B contractor though. If enough anericans who have this knowledge do not apply because they - Hate the tech - Can’t provide their feedback to improve the system - Don’t like the salary offered even if’s greater than their current unemployment income, then is it for an offshore company to come in and fill that gap.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rwallace 7y ago
I don't think the point is that Americans should consider themselves too good for the COBOL jobs. The point is that the organization has stated that it will refuse to hire many people who would be willing and able to do the jobs.
- jeromegv 7y ago
  People love to attribute bad faith into a government just trying to get their shit together in the middle of an emergency. Where and when have they refused?
AllanHoustonSt 7y ago
Which popular H1B source countries teach COBOL? I feel like the advent of cheap offshore programming came well after the decline of COBOL. Though my sense of history can very well be off.
- ethanwillis 7y ago
  They can just lie about experience can they not?
- bencollier49 7y ago
  A lot of Indian degree courses teach COBOL for exactly this reason.
- 7y ago

diek 7y ago

SDLC is often used to emphasize that you need to be familiar with the full "Software Development Lifecycle". When I read SDLC I just assume they mean, "you need to be able to take a project from concept to deployment (including documentation for supporting it long term)". Depending on org structures, a lot of engineers only work on one part of that pipeline throughout their career.

burfog 7y ago
Nah, this is clearly an IBM mainframe shop. SDLC is a layer 2 network protocol in the SNA stack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control

burfog 7y ago

They aren't asking for so much. They want: 1. understanding the language (COBOL) 2. IBM mainframe experience (JCL, DB2, VSAM, SDLC) 3. credentialed (4-year degree) Note that SDLC is a layer 2 network protocol in the SNA stack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control

godzillabrennus 7y ago
3.) is what gets me... Why do you need to pay a college to get a piece of paper to enable someone to pay you for skills you otherwise posses?
- kchr 7y ago
  I am not saying I agree with this system, but am assuming one of the reasons is that the hiring company see the credentials as a way to not gamble on whether you "are familiar" with a subject or actually has deep knowledge of core concepts taught along a planned syllabus.
- burfog 7y ago
  You say you have skills. Everybody says that. Prove it. Assume the interviewer doesn't have time for a multi-day interview in which your skills are tested. Maybe the employer lost the last person with equivalent skills, so a non-technical interviewer is trying to find a replacement person.
  - invalidOrTaken 7y ago
    >You say you have skills. Everybody says that. Prove it. I feel like this is a game of chicken that FAANG can win, but NJ Unemployment Office (or whatever) cannot. The shortage isn't really cash. You could hire some bright high school students for cheap, and, given enough time, and half-supervision by an experienced dev (who doesn't even know COBOL), they could fix whatever bugs are ailing the system. You could hire a couple (again, COBOL-ignorant!) web devs at or above market rate, and they could also deliver a working system. It would take time, but they could do it. The actual shortage is management. They don't have anyone who'd be confident fixing things if said high school students screwed up. They don't have backups, or don't know how they work. It's unlikely they know what actually needs to be done. So what they actually need is a tech lead. But they think they just need "programmers," so they advertise for programmers (with inflated requirements, because they need them to actually be a lead) and the pay is commensurate for "programmers," rather than what they actually need.

DeathArrow 7y ago

Looks like they want a programmer to do the job of an entire IT department.

PappaPatat 7y ago

> I was sort of tempted to pursue this. For me the exact opposite. 15 years ago I removed any and all reverence to my history of COBOL because I was suddenly actively being contacted for COBOL coding jobs. Although I had a great time, as a starting coder, with COBOL jobs (transcoding COBOL to C at the time), I know one thing: ever ever again will I utter one like of COBOL code. There are still people making very decent money doing it, but the lockin to one particular source of work just does not sound like what I could bare.

microtherion 7y ago

> I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines In the mid-80s, my first year CS professor anticipated most us ending up "in the lead mines of COBOL programming" — it was commonly assumed that we'd never manage to get rid of the dominance of COBOL. Are references to mining common in the COBOL scene?

tylerrobinson 7y ago
I can’t tell if you are joking, but “the salt mines” is a rather common bit of workplace humor, at least in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining#Idiomatic_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining#Idiomatic_use
- microtherion 7y ago
  Thanks! I genuinely was not aware of "salt mines" specifically, though I have come across mining references, and even made some myself, now that I think about it.

indymike 7y ago

Or they are fulfilling Rhett requirement to post the job publications when they are rehiring a specific person quickly.

IanS00 7y ago

4-year degree? So that rules out Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg. To get serious, they need to move HR aside. Many of the best techs from the '70s and 80s dropped out of college. What was called for back then was real-world experience, not slips of paper. I seem to spend most of my working life trying not to embarrass people with 4-year degrees who can't even spell things like "COBOL".

pelliphant 7y ago

dont really know anything about this particular case, but: Isn't it common for job applications like this to state what they "want", even if they know that it doesn't exist? (such as 3 years of experience with an 1 year old product). Then they just hire the person who gets the closest to what they want.