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

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

#131

Post by Killswitch »

hga wrote: post #45
justinlardinois wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never quite expected these words to be typed on my keyboard, but the porn industry is something I'd like to read a tech article about.

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.

If you think shared hosting and PHP are pioneering, then sure. But no, the adult industry doesn't pioneer much after about 2001.

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

#132

Post by duskwuff »

logfromblammo wrote: post #87
breischl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, you are not joking. I still get the occasional ping from someone looking for me to work on TIBCO. I did a tiny bit of work on that in ~2001. It was on my resume for about a year. I'm still getting pinged for it 13 years later. Ironically (or perhaps predictably) I've avoided adding the same two technologies you mentioned to my own resume.

Add "Crystal Reports" and "MUMPS" to the "do not put on resume" list. I never even actually worked with Crystal Reports. A long time ago, I made a bunch of similar resumes that each included one thing extra on them, because I was curious about what I could be learning to get better response rates. The Crystal Reports variant produced a deluge of the worst-sounding jobs touted by the most clueless recruiters. And that…

> A long time ago, I made a bunch of similar resumes that each included one thing extra on them, because I was curious about what I could be learning to get better response rates.

Holy crap. A/B testing résumés? :D

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

#133

Post by zem »

wow, my worst job infrastructure experience ever was when we were all forced to run a windows virtual machine to run outlook as our mail client, even though we were developing on linux and there was no real reason to prefer outlook over a linux mail client. (our company was making software for the windows vm market, and the ceo got the bright idea that everyone should run a windows vm to dogfood our product.)

it was a pretty miserable experience, but this kind of puts it into perspective :)

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

#134

Post by bbcbasic »

artmageddon wrote: post #113
logfromblammo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add "Crystal Reports" and "MUMPS" to the "do not put on resume" list. I never even actually worked with Crystal Reports. A long time ago, I made a bunch of similar resumes that each included one thing extra on them, because I was curious about what I could be learning to get better response rates. The Crystal Reports variant produced a deluge of the worst-sounding jobs touted by the most clueless recruiters. And that…

It seems like everyone wants resumes in Word format. The one time I tried to send a PDF the recruiter nearly treated it like it was some unknown format and asked me to resend as Word.

Maybe it is just the recruiter. I saw a printed copy of my CV with their header on in one interview, so I assume they want to edit it to do that.

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

#135

Post by bbcbasic »

Excellent! It feels like I am on the Daily WTF. A severe WTF followed by a thread of everyone's battle stories.

I've worked on .NET most of my career. Biggest old-tech WTF is JS in IE5, or hours of fun getting those DCOM balls spinning again.

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

#136

Post by trentnelson »

raverbashing wrote: post #16
PaulHoule wrote: post #4

The only way to stop this madness is to go on strike against it, as you did. I work very hard to never mention online that I've had anything to do with SharePoint or ColdFusion because it will bring recruiters with a job that will kill you.

The same with Clearcase for me Having it in the job description is bad, having it in the actual job is a complete no-no for me

Heh, such... memories from my CQ/CC days. So lucrative, though.

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

#137

Post by hga »

jonawesomegreen wrote: post #130
warfangle wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similarly embarrassing state of affairs is the train traffic control system used by the NYC subway system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA

That is fascinating, thanks for sharing. I had no idea the NYC subway was being run by a 100 year old electro-mechanical system.

The D.C. Metro system was planed in the '60 and constructed in the '70s, with the first operations starting in 1976. It too is based on electro-mechanical relays, although it's more ambitious, after the operator closes the doors and sees all is fine, he hits a "go" button and the system automatically takes the train to the next station, avoiding collisions as long as the "is there a train in the next segment" sensor system is working.

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

#138

Post by ilaksh »

6stringmerc wrote: post #99
russell wrote: post #37

As soon as I saw the title, I thought of the furor when Gingrich and Clinton discovered that the FAA was using vacuum tube computers and radar in the air traffic control system. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/clinton.htm The foreign (sole) vacuum tube supplier that Clinton mentioned was Russia. Oh, the embarrassment! I knew that there were some delays in rolling out the the replacement system, so I did so…

When working in risk management business development, my firm was pursuing some line of business with Sabre. Most probably know, but they're in the travel logistics business primarily. A spinoff from American Airlines. Anyway, when I was getting materials together, I reviewed the CEO's summary remarks and looking ahead to the future. Over, and over, and over, and over again he railed at the FAA and government for not…

It is clear to me that the government is not only a criminal organization but also dangerously incompetent.

Therefore we have a moral obligation to replace government institutions with high tech systems and protocols that are not reliant on the government for support.

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

#139

Post by cecilpl »

rwallace wrote: post #124
me2i81 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Six characters! Luxury. I worked on a system where we only had five.

Five characters! Luxury. I learned to program on a system where we only had two. (Not joking: on the Commodore eight bit machines, only the first two characters of variable names were significant.)

Applesoft BASIC (for the Apple ][e) was like this too.

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

#140

Post by xj9 »

russnewcomer wrote: post #7

I think the most interesting lessons of this story have to do with the following expectations. First, the expectation of support timelines. It seems in tech that support is promised for products far beyond when the vendor should reasonably be expected to support them. Companies make large investments in technology that ultimately aren't long-term enough. Lesson: Any company doing a major project where there is signif…

I agree with you, but most software engineers seem hell-bent on ignoring the discipline that every other kind of engineer is required to learn in order to exercise their craft. I don't mean to say that software engineers are not engineers, but I do think we should put more emphasis on shipping correct programs rather than merely functional ones.
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