3 ms·

This is the key quote: > It's important to recognise that the skills crisis is not simply about a shortage of people who understand how to code in the COBOL la

This is the key quote: > It's important to recognise that the skills crisis is not simply about a shortage of people who understand how to code in the COBOL language. The deeper issue is the lack of application knowledge. Being able to code in COBOL is the first step. The really hard part is understanding what an application does. We techies - programmers as well as business folks in tech - love to think that a programmer's most valuable skills are their knowledge of programming languages. It isn't, and never was. You can learn a programming language from a book, and practice it virtually anywhere. Domain knowledge, such as understanding the rules of a bureaucracy or a regulatory regime, can usually only be acquired through years of on-the-job training. If there's a COBOL angle to this, it's what they highlight in the next paragraph: Tight coupling within COBOL monoliths, which is probably more a result of their age than their implementation language, has made it impossible for someone with less-than-extensive knowledge of the system they're working in to be able to work efficiently and effectively. I'm not sure what the solution to that problem is, but I don't think it's ever going to be a programming language.

bumby 6y ago
While it’s true in practice for most companies, I’ve always had the suspicion that if it takes years to learn a process, it often indicates a bad process full of tribal knowledge and loosely defined informal heuristics. I’d like to think competent people shouldn’t need years to understand a well-defined process
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  On the one hand, you're absolutely correct. On the other hand, we could handily rephrase that as a lame joke: How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. They hold the light bulb still, and the entire office revolves around them.
finnthehuman 6y ago
>We techies - programmers as well as business folks in tech - love to think that a programmer's most valuable skills are their knowledge of programming languages. Until recently, this wasn't a common thought beyond the beginner stage. I think the mindset comes from the demand to grind out websites. A short ramp up has become way more important than ability to learn on the job. Programming isn't magic, one of our not-software disciplines has a tradition of learning python so they can make business logic changes to internal tooling we maintain for them. Not that it's hard for them to get on our schedule (they usually preempt our other work), it's just that it's so damn easy for someone smart to pick up python.

bumby 6y ago

While it’s true in practice for most companies, I’ve always had the suspicion that if it takes years to learn a process, it often indicates a bad process full of tribal knowledge and loosely defined informal heuristics. I’d like to think competent people shouldn’t need years to understand a well-defined process

mumblemumble 6y ago
On the one hand, you're absolutely correct. On the other hand, we could handily rephrase that as a lame joke: How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. They hold the light bulb still, and the entire office revolves around them.

finnthehuman 6y ago

>We techies - programmers as well as business folks in tech - love to think that a programmer's most valuable skills are their knowledge of programming languages. Until recently, this wasn't a common thought beyond the beginner stage. I think the mindset comes from the demand to grind out websites. A short ramp up has become way more important than ability to learn on the job. Programming isn't magic, one of our not-software disciplines has a tradition of learning python so they can make business logic changes to internal tooling we maintain for them. Not that it's hard for them to get on our schedule (they usually preempt our other work), it's just that it's so damn easy for someone smart to pick up python.