81–90 of 309 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they mean that SDLC? Or do they mean "synchronous data link control"?
Nope - http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileLifecycle.html Though I would of prefered your flavour as way more fun and less admin work overheads.
How hard is cobol to pick up and learn at the level needed to contribute? I'm sure there are many no longer employed programmers in the tri state area that might be able to help
Here's a taste: https://qntm.org/zomg >System z is a living fossil; it is computing archaeology; computing palaeontology. System z is an example of the principle "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" carried to its logical extreme. System z and its predecessors haven't broken for forty-five years: the "z" stands for "zero downtime" and some of these machines have been running continuously for decades without a reboot. No…
Just FYI, my laptop has "Enter" clearly printed on both keys.
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 bee…
The point at which the government should have rewritten their COBOL systems into a language that would have a talent pool to draw from was at least 30 years ago.
And this is a department that have billions.
Techies: What can we do to help? 3D print ventilators? Process terabytes of data in seconds? AI?! Govt: We need COBOL programmers. Techies: I am powerless to help. But seriously some of the brightest techies I know quit their jobs to do a stint of government work which included slinging VBA and ASP Classic to remove SQL injections from VA websites and other similarly unglamorous tasks with huge impact. If you want to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instead of hiring three mediocre or less than mediocre engineers at $60k, why not hire an amazing $150k - $180k engineer? In many cases, it's literally not legal for them to do so. For example, at the Federal level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_ser... (These restrictions don't tend to apply to hiring one via a contractor at $250-500k/year, though. Sigh.)
> These restrictions don't tend to apply to hiring one via a contractor at $250-500k/year, though. They very well may have to go that route, i.e. some greybeard independent contractor that can name their price. It's a very limited skillset and God knows this ain't the kind of work that gets the super talented motivated.
To hire someone who can do the job reasonably quick and well is really expensive no matter how you slice it. Consider it a 'job well done' if you can persuade them to:
a) Un-retire
and
b) Come out of said retirement to do actual work in the trenches again - as opposed to management.
In the private sector, these people have probably made the equivalent of GS-15 Step 10 for years if not decades. Good luck trying to convince them to jump back in for what is essentially a pay cut.
Techies: What can we do to help? 3D print ventilators? Process terabytes of data in seconds? AI?! Govt: We need COBOL programmers. Techies: I am powerless to help. But seriously some of the brightest techies I know quit their jobs to do a stint of government work which included slinging VBA and ASP Classic to remove SQL injections from VA websites and other similarly unglamorous tasks with huge impact. If you want to…
Edit: per the thread starting with vaidhy's comment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope - http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileLifecycle.html Though I would of prefered your flavour as way more fun and less admin work overheads.
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...)
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.