The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever • Hacker News Board

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#71

Post by mattzito » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

bro-stick wrote: post #60

hga wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Danger team did built a great system for its time and by the time Microsoft took over, it went downhill fast. Microsoft managed one of the biggest cloud computing screw ups in history to date: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sidekick_data_loss The incident caused a public loss of confidence in the concept of cloud computing, which had been plagued by a series of outages and data losses in 2009. It also was pro…

Yup. I managed some dataguard (not RAC) instances on AWS for Palm pre HP. Thankfully we had DR plans and snapshots to cover our asses. Edit: Fixed HA techs.

How did you do RAC on AWS without shared storage?

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#72

Post by siavosh » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

mekael wrote: post #55

Ah legacy enterprise software/hardware, it keeps me employed and insane. Where i currently work we have a system which was originally designed in '69(coding started in 75) running on an ibm iSeries. It's old old tech and most of the system is cludged together so poorly that instead of being able to write patches we just write wrappers around the applications(micro services really) that modify the program as its runni…

It's an interesting time when one can build a living/breathing piece of engineering that can outlive us indefinitely.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#73

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

rogerbinns wrote: post #56

ErikRogneby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the national do-not-call list for clueless tech recruiters?

I maintain one at http://www.rogerbinns.com/blocked_recruiters.txt My resume has a "note to recruiters" attached. It is very clear if a recruiter has made any effort to read any of that. The clueless ones end up in the list above. http://www.rogerbinns.com/recruiters.html

Priceless. That ought to be a thing like the 'GPL' or other licenses, a 'license to contact'. Consider making it available under CC so others can use it too and maybe the cumulative effect would be enough to make some real changes.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#74

Post by unoti » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:44 PM UTC

It's the people that make a job good or bad; the technology plays a comparatively small role.

I've worked with people I'd do anything for, including spending a couple years wading through old technology. You do it for the team, because you love your people. The same is true using new technology: it's easiest when you're doing it for your team.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#75

Post by hinkley » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

Jesus, man. Company X? Company Y? Product Z?

Variable naming is a very important skill.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#76

Post by jsnell » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

sthorn wrote: post #61

JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

I was completely expecting 8 inch floppies or punch cards to show up once I was half way through reading.

LOL, we debugged our PL/M with an Intel ICE ("blue box") that used 8" floppies. Good times.

One of these? http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/731/Intel-MDS-80-Micr...

Wow, that looks just amazing.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#77

Post by peeters » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:49 PM UTC

> That idea was nixed since the machine was old and fragile, we couldn't risk poking around in the inside.

Well that pretty much sums up everything doesn't it. I don't see how a rational brain could produce that thought.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#78

Post by userbinator » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:49 PM UTC

Aside from the bureaucracy, that actually sounds like a fun job to me, solving obscure problems and working with things almost no one has heard of, instead of churning out and maintaining boring "cookie-cutter" applications. Then again, I do like retrocomputing, reverse-engineering, and the demoscene...

I imagined myself in a job interview in 2010, trying to explain how useful my extensive knowledge of Xenix, PL/M build systems, and VMS would be to my prospective new employer.

You can phrase it as having gained that knowledge through your problem-solving skills. Working on obscure things, that you can't just Google the answer to when you get stuck, really helps build those skills.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#79

Post by njharman » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #66

q4814 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that the computers didn't run on tubes but rather the radar systems. The two may have been conflated. I believe I've read that tubes are still quite common in high-power radio transmitters because they're more effective than solid-state components. Still a bad situation, but maybe not as sensational as it appears on the surface.

Russia used tubes in a number of fighter radars because they could use a lot of power to burn through opponent's ECM.

Also less prone to EMP from nukes.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#80

Post by trhway » Tue, Sep 01, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

justinlardinois wrote: post #51

hga wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read in passing that in times past they were web technology pioneers. Seem to remember some were using Freebsd when the canonical approach was Sun etc. big iron and UNIX(TM), and Linux was perhaps not quite yet mature enough.

From what I've read, the adult industry (or, more generally, the human desire to have porn) has pioneered technology in general. I can't recall the source, but I recall reading something that said that most, if not all visual media were used for porn almost immediately after their inception. I think porn is also something where your architecture only needs to just work , so that encourages cutting corners and occasio…

>From what I've read, the adult industry (or, more generally, the human desire to have porn) has pioneered technology in general. I can't recall the source, but I recall reading something that said that most, if not all visual media were used for porn almost immediately after their inception.

no kidding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines

" Various figurines exaggerate the abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs, or vulva. In contrast, arms and feet are often absent, and the head is usually small and faceless.

The original cultural meaning and purpose of these artifacts is not known. It has frequently been suggested that they may have served a ritual or symbolic function. "

yep :) Imagine an archaeologist in the year 3000 looking at backups of our days Internet and wondering what "ritual or symbolic function" all those images and videos played...