Jeez, what happened to/. that we are having a lengthy discussion about retiring ? Having said that (and I am 'only' in my 50's) I think most of us can out think and out program the kids at work nowadays.
If you employ local people they spend their money in the local economy. If you train and develop local people, you spread more money around the local economy and you help develop your area and your country. Its also a lot easier to do collaborative, agile work when everyone is co-located. Sure you can outsource to a foreign country that bring people into the country, but they rarely stay longer than a couple of years and take your companies IP back home with them along with their accumulated savings.
Outsourcing may seem cheaper - and it is at first - but in practice it works out more expensive for companies. Foreign outsourcing companies slowly ramp up the costs and their workers slowly increase their expectations of what they should earn.
By the time a company wakes up from its outsourcing nightmare and decide they want to do it themselves , their own systems are a stranger to them.
Ah yes - Quake. Playing it late at night for the first time with the Trent Reznor soundtrack echoing around the bedroom. Then standing in the lobby and looking at the different entrances and the roof, just amazed at the effects and 3D imagery. Quake 2 - not so great with the sci-fi stuff and then Quake 3 Arena : rocket jumps & intelligent bots !
Spot on with your comments.
And in a modern DevOps environment, you dont need to treat the Mainframe Developers (and their associated Ops colleagues) any different to the Java (or similar) guys. Put them all together and get them collaborating and treat the Mainframe like any other Server (albeit with a bit more care). There are enough people out there looking for jobs that you can get a code academy to train some junior COBOL devs for you or x-train some of the Java guys. The offshore guys in Eastern Europe (Belarus for example) can do some quality COBOL code if needed. The Indians also built up a lot of COBOL skills for Y2K that they can still deploy and they are not adverse to retraining if required.
I dont think that you can beat the mainframe for transaction handling right now (like overnight batch for ATMs) except in some isolated cases. Compare some modern Core Banking platforms with MF on transactions per second - as in actually do performance testing and not just listen to the Vendors empty promises. Sure you have places like Google and Amazon where the Devs are brilliant & can manage just about anything on new platforms but that's not the case in the Banks:-)
The most boring and brain-sapping 'Enterprise' technology out there. Honestly - who goes home and thinks 'Aah - a couple of nice quiet hours programming in my favourite language on my favourite projects'. Even the outsource Indians at work seen tired of Java. Or life. Can't tell.
Spot on. Everyone with a degree or a diploma wants a better life, and there is simply not enough money going around to provide that.
Helping the populace develop some basic coding skills is useless - what do they do with these skills ? It does not mean that lots of people become coders capable of working on enterprise level software ? And if they have half a brain they will know that IT is not going to be the field of their dreams.
The competition with India and China is economic - they can survive on a lot less money and in the USA you can't.
So yes, this is a drive towards the bottom. As salaries and living standards in China and India adjust upwards, it will be easier for the West to compete - but our salaries and living standards would need to go down substantially. And there will be no money for the welfare state to support us if we are ill or out of work. There are plenty of other nations like Vietnam standing by to provide coders when the Chinese or Indian ones get too expensive.
What I find most appalling is that when I started out in IT , it was a middle class White Collar job. We were well paid professionals with some respect in the market and aspirations. Now the best we can come up with as a replacement job is fixing toilets or cutting hair.
You sound more like Stalin surrounded by Yes people than a real manager. Ruling by fear is not leadership.
Jesus Christ Man - glad I don't work for you. I would be in the isolation chamber by now.
Its been around for ages (in IT terms) and has caused more heartburn to developers than bad doughnuts. Used a lot in the monstrous systems that run the Corporates but not so much for developers looking to have a bit of coding fun.
Java is as cool as Vanilla Ice was back in the early nineties.
I could not agree more. Eugenics is a short cut to the abyss and some very unsavoury people have played this card before. It ended up with Concentration camps.
Java is the new COBOL. Lots of developers use it a work but few use it at home because it is so tedious. You will spend most of your time learning how to drive frameworks and not coding.
In related news, I am pleased to announce my new "virtual slave" hardware, which intercepts communication from the "Virtual Boss" device to PHBServer and provides an excellent replacement stream of communication indicating you always participate in meetings, visit precisely three fellow employees for ten minutes each day, and never go to the bathroom. ("Virtual Slave eXtreme" will be available soon, with many customization options.)
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Jeez, what happened to /. that we are having a lengthy discussion about retiring ? Having said that (and I am 'only' in my 50's) I think most of us can out think and out program the kids at work nowadays.
If you employ local people they spend their money in the local economy. If you train and develop local people, you spread more money around the local economy and you help develop your area and your country. Its also a lot easier to do collaborative, agile work when everyone is co-located. Sure you can outsource to a foreign country that bring people into the country, but they rarely stay longer than a couple of years and take your companies IP back home with them along with their accumulated savings. Outsourcing may seem cheaper - and it is at first - but in practice it works out more expensive for companies. Foreign outsourcing companies slowly ramp up the costs and their workers slowly increase their expectations of what they should earn. By the time a company wakes up from its outsourcing nightmare and decide they want to do it themselves , their own systems are a stranger to them.
Alien. The first one. Watched it on VHS - bolted out of my seat and fell on the ground when alien junior burst through the guys chest.
Java is the new COBOL. Not a language for a bit of fun weekend work. It is there to pay the bills.
Java is the new Corporate COBOL methinks. C# is becoming more x-platform with DotNet Core, and since MS bought Xamarin.
Ah yes - Quake. Playing it late at night for the first time with the Trent Reznor soundtrack echoing around the bedroom. Then standing in the lobby and looking at the different entrances and the roof, just amazed at the effects and 3D imagery. Quake 2 - not so great with the sci-fi stuff and then Quake 3 Arena : rocket jumps & intelligent bots !
Spot on with your comments. And in a modern DevOps environment, you dont need to treat the Mainframe Developers (and their associated Ops colleagues) any different to the Java (or similar) guys. Put them all together and get them collaborating and treat the Mainframe like any other Server (albeit with a bit more care). There are enough people out there looking for jobs that you can get a code academy to train some junior COBOL devs for you or x-train some of the Java guys. The offshore guys in Eastern Europe (Belarus for example) can do some quality COBOL code if needed. The Indians also built up a lot of COBOL skills for Y2K that they can still deploy and they are not adverse to retraining if required. I dont think that you can beat the mainframe for transaction handling right now (like overnight batch for ATMs) except in some isolated cases. Compare some modern Core Banking platforms with MF on transactions per second - as in actually do performance testing and not just listen to the Vendors empty promises. Sure you have places like Google and Amazon where the Devs are brilliant & can manage just about anything on new platforms but that's not the case in the Banks :-)
The most boring and brain-sapping 'Enterprise' technology out there. Honestly - who goes home and thinks 'Aah - a couple of nice quiet hours programming in my favourite language on my favourite projects'. Even the outsource Indians at work seen tired of Java. Or life. Can't tell.
Spot on. Everyone with a degree or a diploma wants a better life, and there is simply not enough money going around to provide that. Helping the populace develop some basic coding skills is useless - what do they do with these skills ? It does not mean that lots of people become coders capable of working on enterprise level software ? And if they have half a brain they will know that IT is not going to be the field of their dreams. The competition with India and China is economic - they can survive on a lot less money and in the USA you can't. So yes, this is a drive towards the bottom. As salaries and living standards in China and India adjust upwards, it will be easier for the West to compete - but our salaries and living standards would need to go down substantially. And there will be no money for the welfare state to support us if we are ill or out of work. There are plenty of other nations like Vietnam standing by to provide coders when the Chinese or Indian ones get too expensive. What I find most appalling is that when I started out in IT , it was a middle class White Collar job. We were well paid professionals with some respect in the market and aspirations. Now the best we can come up with as a replacement job is fixing toilets or cutting hair.
Godwin's law envoked again
You sound more like Stalin surrounded by Yes people than a real manager. Ruling by fear is not leadership. Jesus Christ Man - glad I don't work for you. I would be in the isolation chamber by now.
If anyone can get it done, it will be Elon Musk and SpaceX. They have the vision and agility that NASA lost in the sixties.
Its been around for ages (in IT terms) and has caused more heartburn to developers than bad doughnuts. Used a lot in the monstrous systems that run the Corporates but not so much for developers looking to have a bit of coding fun. Java is as cool as Vanilla Ice was back in the early nineties.
I could not agree more. Eugenics is a short cut to the abyss and some very unsavoury people have played this card before. It ended up with Concentration camps.
And Java is the new COBOL : verbose language, large install base, mainly corporate users, bored developers...
Data Structures are a must on a CS course, and you need C or C++ to do Linked Lists.
You use it at work but nobody gets excited to use Java at home.
Java is the new COBOL. Lots of developers use it a work but few use it at home because it is so tedious. You will spend most of your time learning how to drive frameworks and not coding.
In related news, I am pleased to announce my new "virtual slave" hardware, which intercepts communication from the "Virtual Boss" device to PHBServer and provides an excellent replacement stream of communication indicating you always participate in meetings, visit precisely three fellow employees for ten minutes each day, and never go to the bathroom. ("Virtual Slave eXtreme" will be available soon, with many customization options.)
And so began the Umbrella Corporation ...
End of story.
If you become a Java developer you will lose your mind, quickly followed by your soul.
Thats why they are calling Java the New COBOL. Just not as cranky yet.
The only thing that surprises me is that they actually got all of this to work. I have seen far less complex IT projects that failed miserably.