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My dad's resume and skills from 1980

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Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#121

Post by shagie »

dspillett wrote: post #99
wyattpeak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day, long after I'm gone, people will finally accept that Python and JavaScript are no longer young languages. JavaScript is 26 years old, Python is 31. They both continue to grow in importance year-on-year, JavaScript because there is nothing on the horizon which will plausibly replace it, and Python because a large number of industries and programmers genuinely love it. I think there's a nontrivial chance they'…

> people will finally accept that Python and JavaScript are no longer young languages > JavaScript is 26 years old, Python is 31 I can't speak for Python, but Javascript has changed¹ massively in recent years, more so (I expect) than Fortran or COBOL every did in their active history. It could be argued that what we have now is a younger language with the same name. > but I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'll at leas…

Fortran77 vs Fortran90 were fairly different languages that required a substantial revision to the numerical methods assignments that I had in the early 90s as the department shifted from one to the other.

https://www.nsc.liu.se/~boein/f77to90/f77to90.html

> There are now two forms of the source code. The old source code form, which is based on the punched card, and now called fixed form and the new free form.

> ...

> A completely new capability of Fortran 90 is recursion. Note that it requires that you assign a new property RESULT to the output variable in the function declaration. This output variable is required inside the function as the "old" function name in order to store the value of the function. At the actual call of the function, both externally and internally, you use the outer or "old" function name. The user can therefore ignore the output variable.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#122

Post by mindcrime »

youngNed wrote: post #37
jstx1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things are generally frowned upon already.

I got made redundant in 2008, i signed up for unemployment benefit (UK) and part of the requirements was i had to attend a cv writing one day workshop, in the basement of a particularly dingy pub. The guy leading it was spectacularly useless from the get-go, training us in how to use word in the most wonderfully terrible way, one particular nugget i remember him coming out with was: 'bold is particularly good for sta…

'bold is particularly good for standing out, in fact I would even go as far as putting the entire document in bold'

Jeeeeeebus. That sounds like something right out of an episode of BOFH!

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#123

Post by Test0129 »

deeblering4 wrote: post #48
lordnacho wrote: post #27

That job market seems like so long ago. See job ad, type out a letter with your CV, wait for them to write back, somehow organize a time to meet, more rounds, and so forth. At least it must have been hard to spam out CVs. The guy seems pretty hardcore from my perspective. University training for all those techs. Of course hardware back then cost a lot of money so you wanted people who knew what they were doing. What…

Up until the mid-late 2000s tech interviews consisted of a few conversations, followed by checking references. CS trivia interviews were largely introduced by Google, with other companies cargo culting that into their interview practices.

I am 100% fine with CS trivia interviews. I am fascinated by CS and can talk your ear off about it.

What I am not fine with is that you're judged entirely on that. My biggest complaint about this industry is not the CS trivia, it's that my entire job history is irrelevant. I have a decade in this industry and a staff title and I am still treated like a junior developer with no experience when I am interviewed. It's degrading and insulting. I can understand rigor in an interview at our average salary but the market is still firmly controlled by corporations despite what the media says about job prospects. Given that there are approximately 10-20 jobs per engineer in the industry right now, if we really cared, all we would have to do is just collectively say "no".

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#124

Post by dsr_ »

oslem wrote: post #52
jcadam wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I eventually gave up on Word templates and now keep my resume in LaTeX. Neat and organized - not unlike this example only with more detail and nicer fonts :) Occasionally a recruiter will ask/demand I give it to them in MS Word - I've learned it's always a bad idea to give recruiter a resume in an easily editable format.

I’m assuming you’re concerned with resume manipulation? Or is there another reason you prefer to submit your resume in a non-editable format?

I see obviously not-the-original resumes from basically every recruiter. If you tell a recruiter "we need someone with senior FOOlang experience", the next day there will be six resumes, one of which has an organic "brought in FOOlang to orchestrate object frackers, reducing development time" and five of which have "N years FOOLAND" inserted into a Skills section in a different font.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#126

Post by latchkey »

bitwize wrote: post #114
latchkey wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been writing code professionally for over 25 years now (and I'm 49). I feel like I could keep writing code for the rest of my life. 50 years doesn't sound like that long.

It's not. Hug your parents, spend time with your family. If you must code, do so on something you really feel strongly about from here on out.

Funny enough, I did exactly that. During covid, I bought the dip and moved to a place that is 100' away from my dads house. I get to see him every day now. I feel very lucky.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#127

Post by no-s »

SnooSux wrote: post #80

Interesting that this is like a cover letter and resume in one.

> Interesting that this is like a cover letter and resume in one.

Pre-email that was pretty much how it went. There was no point in overcomplicating things. People had to type these cover letters and resumes up, over and over. Or they would pay for a service which used one of those “word processor” gizmos. Fortunately for me in ’80 I had a selectric-like printer and a CRT, the very next year I got an IBM PC and could ditch the mainframe. As a result became tres marketable and enjoyed substantial career enhancement.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#128

Post by sandyarmstrong »

enw wrote: post #97

> My dad is 92 and we just put him in a home. Can you stay healthy enough to die of old age in a regular home? “Put him in a home” sounds so ominous and forceful.

My generous interpretation is that dad needs full-time care that the family can't provide in-house. For example, alzheimer's and dementia patients often have very particular needs.

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#129

Post by notfish »

shafoshaf wrote: post #95
walnutclosefarm wrote: post #53

When I first entered the working world as a programmer and administrator of an "academic computing center", in the early 70s, you met men like Ray - ex-military, GI-bill educated, learned computers from the electricity on up in their mid-career, rather frequently, either as customer engineers for one of the big mainframe manufacturers (there were 7 or 8, depending on when and how you counted), or from the minicompute…

It reminds me of "Mel"in 1983 which was in response to "Real Programmers write in FORTRAN." https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html

Which is, of course, included as “The story of Mel” in the jargon file:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/

Re: My dad's resume and skills from 1980

#130

Post by insightcheck »

nsxwolf wrote: post #30

It is so simple. There's no "Experienced software architect with a proven track record of delivering high quality and performant blah blah blah" shit. What were the interviews like back then?

> "Experienced software architect with a proven track record of delivering high quality and performant blah blah blah"

What's wrong with that? Each part of the phrase sounds like something an experienced developer should strive for, and is objectively testable (e.g. delivered projects in a work setting or not, well-written code or not, the software runs quickly or not, etc.).

Junior developers in particular may lack the track record part when starting out, so it's a good indicator that a person is applying for more senior positions.

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