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What is Mainframe Culture?

Posted by Cliff on from the finding-common-ground dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "A couple years ago Joel Spolsky wrote an interesting critique of Eric S. Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming wherein Joel provides an interesting (as usual) discussion on the cultural differences between Windows and Unix programmers. As a *nix nerd in my fifth year managing mainframe developers, I need some insight into mainframe programmers. What are the differences between Windows, Unix, and mainframe programmers? What do we all need to know to get along in each other's worlds?"

3 of 691 comments (clear)

  1. I finally understand by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The one thing I, as a microcomputer (not neccessarily limited to Windows, just forced there by the market) programmer have never understood: The propensity of mainframe programmers to output huge numbers of columns of text for import/export files. At the state agency that I currently am contracting at, I've seen 200-300 columns of data in basically position delimited flat file format, which gets imported into 20-30 tables of relational data. I never understood this until I RTFA'd- and now I understand- they're going for least common denominator probably due to the huge amounts of storage available on a mainframe.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  2. Think Magicians... by jav1231 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Think Magicians. Windows people are like Doug Henning. *NIX people are like Penn and Teller.

  3. Re:Everything Old Is Old Again by ScentCone · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    smelt the ore

    We used to dream of smelting ore. No, when we had to add a new variables to our code, we had to pull the iron fillings out of mom's molars and magnetize them by standing out in lightning storms. And we liked it!

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.