Cobol - Being a COBOL programmer - what does it really take ?

Author

Being a COBOL programmer - what does it really take ?

shaky knees

2006-07-06, 3:55 am

Hi all,

We've seen a lot of "do your own homework" type messages here lately.
In particular the job interview thread of the last few days. I mostly
agree with what y'all seem to think: if a guy can't figure out the
textbook questions for himself, that he won't be the right man for the
job.

It made me think, though. And now I've tried to see it the other way
round.

I've been a Cobol programmer for over 30 years now, and my initial
training at Honeywell Bull in those days took a mere three w

s.
Report Writer and all.

This makes me wonder: cannot we safely assume that to an able
programmer (in any computer language) the cobol syntax and
peculiarities are no more than just another tool in the box?

I have done a lot of job interviews over the years, either side of the
table, and I have never dealt with an interview test yet. Mind you,
this has always been for permanent positions - not for contract jobs
for one or two months. For the latter, I might justify some sort of
test. Maybe this is a matter of cultural difference on both sides of
the Atlantic?

Anyway, I feel that for most, if not all jobs, programmers need to have
some knowledge of the business as well as being able to express
themselves in this or that computer language. And it is my firm belief
that cobol is relatively easy to learn. (I am biased, though :-)

So there it is in (my) order of importance:
1. One must be a programmer (you know the breed: people who can think
in loops - there's probably a better definition floating somewhere out
there)
2. One must have an understanding of the business (be it transport,
media, news, financial)
3. One must have a working knowledge of cobol etc.

Over the last few years it's proven more an more difficult to find
candidates that are strong in all aspects for our job openings.
Therefore we tended towards dropping the third requisite and sending
the best candidate we can find to a full-time Cobol course. Our
expenses.
In other words, find a bookkeeper who writes javascript-enabled
webpages for a hobby, send him off three w

s for a course, and within
three months he's an equal player in the team writing an invoicing app.

Please keep in mind that I'm certainly not saying that 30 years of
experience counts for nothing. After all, we all learn new things each
day. But I fear that I'm not that special after all.

I like to think that all of you who are going steady with CLC over time
are VERY much capable of writing a middle-of-the-road routine in say,
VB or C++. But whenever we need the specifiers in a "printf" or the
methods of a certain class, we look them up - right?

Would it be right if we fail a job interview for that reason alone?
Please share your thoughts.

Michael Mattias

2006-07-06, 7:55 am

"shaky knees" <pvz@orange.nl> wrote in message
news:1152179381.529076.213560@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> This makes me wonder: cannot we safely assume that to an able
> programmer (in any computer language) the cobol syntax and
> peculiarities are no more than just another tool in the box?

While that might be valid for someone who has programmed in a language where
you actually have to write lines of code using functions, verbs and
statements, I have my doubts about it being valid for programmers who have
learned "programming" using only a pointy-clicky-draggy-droppy-touchy-feely
"Rapid Application Development" environment.

Sure, for you and me and all other professional programmers, IF... ELSE..
ENDIF and DO UNTIL .. ENDDO and JUMP/
GOTO are more or less universal concepts, but methinks all these RAD tools
do nothing to teach these fundamentals and we end up with "programmers" who
have few clues as to what they are really doing.

More on topic, I can't see any benefit to either the employer or would-be
employee bullshitting his/her way through an interview. Either your ACTUAL
knowledge and experience are what the employer wants, or they are not.
BS'ing your way through an interview makes all professional programmers
look unprofessional by association. (e.g., used car salesmen, attorneys and
U.S. Congressmen).

YMMV.

MCM

shaky knees

2006-07-06, 7:55 am

Michael Mattias wrote:

> More on topic, I can't see any benefit to either the employer or would-be
> employee bullshitting his/her way through an interview. Either your ACTUAL
> knowledge and experience are what the employer wants, or they are not.
> BS'ing your way through an interview makes all professional programmers
> look unprofessional by association. (e.g., used car salesmen, attorneys and
> U.S. Congressmen).
>
> YMMV.

It does, and that's more ore less my point: WE DON'T DO TESTS in the
first place, and we do not focus on actual knowledge. Rather on
potential.
I value your enhancement: indeed, clicking around is not programming,
it's gaming.

Re-reading my original post, I think I may have been not so polite to
this community. Of course everyone is special. No offense was intended.
I just meant to say that Cobol is, in a way and by the right people
easy-to-learn. And therefore, shouldn't we look more for other things
in a candidate than textbook konowledge?

Regards, Peter

Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 7:55 am

Actually, the "do your own homework" posts are a bit misleading.

When someone posts what looks like a homework question, that's the
answer he gets.

But when someone asks that same question, along with detailed
information about what he has done to solve that problem, he gets
useful advice.

We know that the way someone learns programming is by programming. The
way someone learns problem solving is by solving problems. But
sometimes we need some guidance.

The best answers are those that provide the stuck problem-solver the
direction to allow him to solve his problem.

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shaky knees

2006-07-06, 7:55 am

Howard Brazee wrote:
> Actually, the "do your own homework" posts are a bit misleading.
>
> When someone posts what looks like a homework question, that's the
> answer he gets.

Pardon me for saying so, but you missed my point. Must be my fault.
It's not about pissing off students that don't try themselves. Mr
Dashwood and yourself pointed that out perfectly. My point is about
COBOL. Is it easy enough compared to other skills to just say "hey,
skip this silly language-specific test in an interview, a good
sportsman could be a champion in any discipline"

Regards, Peter

Michael Mattias

2006-07-06, 7:55 am

"shaky knees" <pvz@orange.nl> wrote in message
news:1152191420.587408.269420@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>
> Michael Mattias wrote:
>
would-be[color=darkred]
ACTUAL[color=darkred]
and[color=darkred]
>
> It does, and that's more ore less my point: WE DON'T DO TESTS in the
> first place, and we do not focus on actual knowledge. Rather on
> potential.
> .... therefore, shouldn't we look more for other things
> in a candidate than textbook konowledge?

Depends. If the employer is looking for long-term potential, look for
potential. If the employer needs immediate productivity, look for tangible
skills. But me, I'd find neither long-term potential nor immediate
productivity in anyone who would try to bullshit me during an initial
interview.

I got my first "big" contract job at a little insurance company in
Northbrook Illinois (I won't give you the name, but let's just say I was in
"Good Hands" whilst there.)

They wanted immediate productivity on an IBM Mainframe. I had never seen
and could barely spell mainframe, and told them so. But I was successful in
convincing the interviewer that my general skills and experience on other
machines demonstrated that learning the few differences between mainframes
and other boxes was really moot next to the similarities between COBOL and
COBOL and those between ANSI EDI and ANSI EDI and those between embedded
SQL and embedded SQL. (It probably helped a lot that I actually believe this
very deeply).

The interviewer agreed and we had a very nice nine month association and
everyone wished me well when I left to return to Wisconsin.

MCM

2006-07-06, 7:55 am

In article <1152179381.529076.213560@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
shaky knees <pvz@orange.nl> wrote:

[snip]

>I've been a Cobol programmer for over 30 years now, and my initial
>training at Honeywell Bull in those days took a mere three w

s.
>Report Writer and all.

Ahhhhhh, the classic 'three w

s ago I couldn't spell COBOL and today I
codes it!' Keep in mind, however, that not only were you given (based on
a forty-hour w

) one hundred and twenty hours' worth of training (not
counting homework assignments)... you also had available a few other folks
in the shop to whom you could turn.

>
>This makes me wonder: cannot we safely assume that to an able
>programmer (in any computer language) the cobol syntax and
>peculiarities are no more than just another tool in the box?

Plural majestatus est and all that... one might assume that 'to an able
programmer (in any computer language) the cobol syntax and peculiarities
are no more than just another tool in the box' if one defines 'an able
programmer' in a certain way... a way that just happens to assume the
definition, mind you.

>
>I have done a lot of job interviews over the years, either side of the
>table, and I have never dealt with an interview test yet. Mind you,
>this has always been for permanent positions - not for contract jobs
>for one or two months. For the latter, I might justify some sort of
>test. Maybe this is a matter of cultural difference on both sides of
>the Atlantic?

Could be. I haven't dealt with a permanent position interview for decades
and just about every contract I've taken has involved, at some point,
someone asking me 'what's the difference between an index and a
subscript?' or 'how do you refer to an item in a multiple-level table?' or
(more recently) 'what is reference modification?' or some such.

[snip]

>So there it is in (my) order of importance:
>1. One must be a programmer (you know the breed: people who can think
>in loops - there's probably a better definition floating somewhere out
>there)
>2. One must have an understanding of the business (be it transport,
>media, news, financial)
>3. One must have a working knowledge of cobol etc.
>
>Over the last few years it's proven more an more difficult to find
>candidates that are strong in all aspects for our job openings.
>Therefore we tended towards dropping the third requisite and sending
>the best candidate we can find to a full-time Cobol course. Our
>expenses.

This is anathema to most American corporations, as far as I have been able
to tell. Depending on the organisation the first cut is made at the
technical level (often set at a point which indicates a glaring ignorance
of the person doing the actual job-posting, eg. 'Must have (x) years of
experience in (technology)', where (technology) has been in existence for
fewer than (x) years) or at an intangible level ('Must be a Team Player',
where 'team player' translates into 'a person who is immediately and
transparently substitutable for anyone with whom s/he works').

Training on the Company Dime is just not done, for a variety of reasons;
these might be addressed in another posting, if someone so desires.

>In other words, find a bookkeeper who writes javascript-enabled
>webpages for a hobby, send him off three w

s for a course, and within
>three months he's an equal player in the team writing an invoicing app.

Hmmmmm... I know a fellow, a passable COBOL-codin' fool, who began working
with DB2 in... when was it... 1987 or so. During some time off-job a few
years back he studied for and received certification as an Oracle DBA.
He has yet to find an employer who would consider him as being suitable as
anything *but* a COBOL-codin' fool... he has no Oracle experience, you
see, and has yet to run across anyone 'on the other side of the desk' who
has concluded that nearly twenty years' dabbling with programming
high-volume applications for a similar architecture might, possibly, have
applications in a different environment.

>
>Please keep in mind that I'm certainly not saying that 30 years of
>experience counts for nothing. After all, we all learn new things each
>day. But I fear that I'm not that special after all.

As my Sainted Paternal Grandfather - may he sleep with the angels! - used
to say, 'Never use yourself as a comparative, you'll only be
disappointed'.

>
>I like to think that all of you who are going steady with CLC over time
>are VERY much capable of writing a middle-of-the-road routine in say,
>VB or C++. But whenever we need the specifiers in a "printf" or the
>methods of a certain class, we look them up - right?

See above about plurals and royalty... I have found, here, others who
assert, as I have, 'Give me a cheat-sheet and an afternoon and I'll learn
most of what is needed of me'... and I have found the existence of this
ability has been denied or denigrated by interviewers.

'Nobody can learn that fast... and even if they can we need someone who
knows it right now, right away!'

>
>Would it be right if we fail a job interview for that reason alone?

I cannot speak of 'right' or 'wrong' about these things... but I have
over-heard interviews of what I thought were technically well-qualified
applicants which were followed with comments like 'Did you see the *tie*
that guy was wearing? Who's next on the list?'

DD

2006-07-06, 7:55 am

In article <1152191420.587408.269420@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
shaky knees <pvz@orange.nl> wrote:

[snip]

>No offense was intended.

Too late! You will hear from my seconds in the morning... swords at
twenty paces!

DD

Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 13:28:21 GMT, "Michael Mattias"
<michael.mattias@gte.net> wrote:

>They wanted immediate productivity on an IBM Mainframe. I had never seen
>and could barely spell mainframe, and told them so. But I was successful in
>convincing the interviewer that my general skills and experience on other
>machines demonstrated that learning the few differences between mainframes
>and other boxes was really moot next to the similarities between COBOL and
>COBOL and those between ANSI EDI and ANSI EDI and those between embedded
>SQL and embedded SQL. (It probably helped a lot that I actually believe this
>very deeply).

You were fortunate. I've had a personnel department turn me down
without an interview because I didn't have CoBOL 2 experience. I had
IBM mainframe experience, and I was currently programming on a VAX
using a version of CoBOL that was the same thing as CoBOL 2. But
for people that have no better way to evaluate their needs, that
check-box was king.

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Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

On 6 Jul 2006 06:24:35 -0700, "shaky knees" <pvz@orange.nl> wrote:

>Pardon me for saying so, but you missed my point. Must be my fault.
>It's not about pissing off students that don't try themselves. Mr
>Dashwood and yourself pointed that out perfectly. My point is about
>COBOL. Is it easy enough compared to other skills to just say "hey,
>skip this silly language-specific test in an interview, a good
>sportsman could be a champion in any discipline"

I'm not as convinced of that as I used to be, back when all
programming languages were procedural. Now that I have experienced
the difficulty of changing mind thought to work in some distributed OO
environments, I wonder if those who grew up in those environments
might have similar learning curves moving into mine.

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Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 13:40:19 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf@panix.com () wrote:

>Could be. I haven't dealt with a permanent position interview for decades
>and just about every contract I've taken has involved, at some point,
>someone asking me 'what's the difference between an index and a
>subscript?' or 'how do you refer to an item in a multiple-level table?' or
>(more recently) 'what is reference modification?' or some such.

I'm thinking of a programmer who asked "What's the term for when we
use a colon to indicate the starting and ending character in a
substring?". She used reference modification all the time, but
didn't know what it was called.

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Alistair

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

shaky knees wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We've seen a lot of "do your own homework" type messages here lately.
> In particular the job interview thread of the last few days. I mostly
> agree with what y'all seem to think: if a guy can't figure out the
> textbook questions for himself, that he won't be the right man for the
> job.

There is one person who regularly posts questions on this newsgroup
whom I suspect hails from India. The questions appear to be beginners'
homework but may just as easily be a recruiter asking what answers
he/she should expect at an interview (I knew a manager who got a junior
programmer to set standard questions and answers so that he could tell
if a candidate was bullsh*tting. He was surprised when a candidate gave
a non-standard answer which turned out to be correct), or an Indian
manager trawling for answers to questions that they are likely to be
asked in a competence interview to obtain an out-sourcing contract.

I did once ask a candidate technical questions which he got right.
Subsequently, when he joined us, it was obvious that although he knew
the answers he understood neither the questions nor the answers!

>
> It made me think, though. And now I've tried to see it the other way
> round.
>
> I've been a Cobol programmer for over 30 years now, and my initial
> training at Honeywell Bull in those days took a mere three w

s.
> Report Writer and all.

What about training in the technology, scripting language, utilities,
file types, editors?

>
> This makes me wonder: cannot we safely assume that to an able
> programmer (in any computer language) the cobol syntax and
> peculiarities are no more than just another tool in the box?

No. VB is not just another tool in the box either.

>
> I have done a lot of job interviews over the years, either side of the
> table, and I have never dealt with an interview test yet.

That might be a peculiarity of Holland but in the UK I have twice not
been asked a technical question despite being interviewed dozens of
times. I have known contractors who feigned knowledge of a language
where they had none and learned on-the-job.

> Mind you,
> this has always been for permanent positions - not for contract jobs
> for one or two months. For the latter, I might justify some sort of
> test. Maybe this is a matter of cultural difference on both sides of
> the Atlantic?
>
> Anyway, I feel that for most, if not all jobs, programmers need to have
> some knowledge of the business as well as being able to express
> themselves in this or that computer language. And it is my firm belief
> that cobol is relatively easy to learn. (I am biased, though :-)
>
> So there it is in (my) order of importance:
> 1. One must be a programmer (you know the breed: people who can think
> in loops - there's probably a better definition floating somewhere out
> there)
> 2. One must have an understanding of the business (be it transport,
> media, news, financial)
> 3. One must have a working knowledge of cobol etc.
>
> Over the last few years it's proven more an more difficult to find
> candidates that are strong in all aspects for our job openings.

OK, BLATANT BEGGING FOR WORK:
Cobol expert available to start at 24 hours notice, able to satisfy 1,
2, 3, above.
I would love to work in Holland (although the beer is better in
Belgium!)

> Therefore we tended towards dropping the third requisite and sending
> the best candidate we can find to a full-time Cobol course. Our
> expenses.
> In other words, find a bookkeeper who writes javascript-enabled
> webpages for a hobby,

Yep, got that and do it too.

> send him off three w

s for a course, and within
> three months he's an equal player in the team writing an invoicing app.
>
> Please keep in mind that I'm certainly not saying that 30 years of
> experience counts for nothing. After all, we all learn new things each
> day. But I fear that I'm not that special after all.
>
> I like to think that all of you who are going steady with CLC over time
> are VERY much capable of writing a middle-of-the-road routine in say,
> VB or C++. But whenever we need the specifiers in a "printf" or the
> methods of a certain class, we look them up - right?

And why do you look them up? Because the mainstay of your work is Cobol
and because (if you look at the variants of grep) the parameters vary
from one variant (grep, egrep, fgrep) to another and may have a
different meaning for the same parameter.

>
> Would it be right if we fail a job interview for that reason alone?
> Please share your thoughts.

I once knew an experienced analyst/programmer who could not remember
the Cobol or JCL syntaxes (syntaxii? syntaxae?) but proudly declared
that she knew where the manual was! I would not have employed her.

One additional thought, if you do not know the language intimately then
it would be all too easy to write applications which rather resembled
pigs' ears rather than silk purses. A famous painter, when accused of
charging too much for half an hours work, remarked that it was the
years of experience and not the time spent on the one painting that
their client was paying for. I believe that if you code out of a box
then the contents are most likely to resemble a ball of string after
the cat has played with it. Hasn't the employer got the right to check
that you know what you are talking about when they are investing 3
months' salary in recruiting you to the post?

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

In article <g46qa21he4suj0dfl9dq4esa93gfaqf0nc@4ax.com>,
Howard Brazee <howard@brazee.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 13:40:19 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf@panix.com () wrote:
>
>
>I'm thinking of a programmer who asked "What's the term for when we
>use a colon to indicate the starting and ending character in a
>substring?". She used reference modification all the time, but
>didn't know what it was called.

She might, then, have difficulty answering 'what is reference
modification' to the satisfaction of some interviewers I have run across.

DD

Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

On 6 Jul 2006 07:09:33 -0700, "Alistair"
<alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>I once knew an experienced analyst/programmer who could not remember
>the Cobol or JCL syntaxes (syntaxii? syntaxae?) but proudly declared
>that she knew where the manual was! I would not have employed her.

Syntaxes is correct. I love it when I find a correct alternative
plural such as "subschemata".

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Michael Mattias

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:tl5qa2h1n306qagr0317qa0semghqsua7f@
4ax.com...

> On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 13:28:21 GMT, "Michael Mattias"
> <michael.mattias@gte.net> wrote:
[color=darkred]
> You were fortunate. I've had a personnel department turn me down
> without an interview because I didn't have CoBOL 2 experience. I had
> IBM mainframe experience, and I was currently programming on a VAX
> using a version of CoBOL that was the same thing as CoBOL 2. But
> for people that have no better way to evaluate their needs, that
> check-box was king.

Well, management being an art rather than a science, one should expect to
encounter some management which, if rated as artists would merit no better
than "stick-figure competent."

Personnel Departments have no business eliminating candidates based on
checkboxes; IMNSHO that's 100% Amateur Hour.

Of course, when Personnel Departments get crummy descriptions of what they
want, it's hard to blame them.

Of course, supervisors who cannot clearly communicate their needs to that
personnel department should be considered for a prompt lateral promotion.

Of course, the managers who promoted the above to supervisors and delegated
the hiring to them should also be considered for a reduction of
responsibilities (you can even call it health-related if you want).

MCM

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

In article <Vy9rg.62289$fb2.6158@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>,
Michael Mattias <michael.mattias@gte.net> wrote:
>"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
> news:tl5qa2h1n306qagr0317qa0semghqsua7f@
4ax.com...
>
>
>
>Well, management being an art rather than a science, one should expect to
>encounter some management which, if rated as artists would merit no better
>than "stick-figure competent."

It may be, Mr Mattias, that managers, as practioners of management, are
more-or-less the same as practioners of... just about anything; in my
experience 10% of those who do things have what I would call 'The Touch'
and the rest are just getting by.

(This would seem to be a variant of Sturgeon's Law, ie '90% of everything
is crap', except that I do not refer to the remaining 90% as being 'crap'
and I formulated it long before I learned of the existence of said Law.)

[snip]

>Of course, when Personnel Departments get crummy descriptions of what they
>want, it's hard to blame them.
>
>Of course, supervisors who cannot clearly communicate their needs to that
>personnel department should be considered for a prompt lateral promotion.
>
>Of course, the managers who promoted the above to supervisors and delegated
>the hiring to them should also be considered for a reduction of
>responsibilities (you can even call it health-related if you want).

From
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp...9d?dmode=source>

--begin quoted text:

On the other hand... things in a business rarely exist in vacuo and the
Russian proveb has it 'a fish rots from the head' (which isn't really
true... I would imagine that putrefaction would begin in the lower
intestines, where things are turning to excrement anyhow... but I
digress). As was noticed by, among others, Sir Thomas Gresham: when there
exists in circulation two kinds of money, one bad and one good, then bad
money will drive good money out of the marketplace. This is still debated
to this day by financiers, economists and Other Worthy Folks but I have
noticed a slight variation applicable to the workplace, a sort of
Gresham's Law of Management: when there exists in a workplace two kinds of
management, one bad and one good, then bad management will drive good
management out of the workplace.

--end quoted text

DD

Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 15:32:04 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf@panix.com () wrote:

>(This would seem to be a variant of Sturgeon's Law, ie '90% of everything
>is crap', except that I do not refer to the remaining 90% as being 'crap'
>and I formulated it long before I learned of the existence of said Law.)

Except the word Sturgeon used was "crud".

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2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

In article <m2dqa29bsh60iv9u3o32k6gg2kfoqd0apa@4ax.com>,
Howard Brazee <howard@brazee.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 15:32:04 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf@panix.com () wrote:
>
>
>Except the word Sturgeon used was "crud".

Your citation, Mr Brazee? Sturgeon's Revelation about science fiction
referred to 'crud', granted, but I was relying on the Jargon File
definition ( http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/s/SturgeonsLaw.html ).

DD

Alistair

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

Michael Mattias wrote:
> "Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
> news:tl5qa2h1n306qagr0317qa0semghqsua7f@
4ax.com...
>
>
>
> Well, management being an art rather than a science, one should expect to
> encounter some management which, if rated as artists would merit no better
> than "stick-figure competent."
>
> Personnel Departments have no business eliminating candidates based on
> checkboxes; IMNSHO that's 100% Amateur Hour.
>

But HR personnel (clearly an example of job title inflation) do
eliminate candidates on the basis of checkboxes: not having enough
ticks; having too many ticks; or not recognising analogous skills which
should result in ticked boxes.

And it ain't just HR departments. I find the hardest thing now is to
get past the Agencies employed to advertise and first sift candidates.
Most agents being air-heads with no understanding of the skills or
environment involved. How many here have been offered the opportunity
of a systems programmer position when they are clearly a systems
analyst or applications programmer?

Alistair

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

Howard Brazee wrote:
> On 6 Jul 2006 07:09:33 -0700, "Alistair"
> <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Syntaxes is correct. I love it when I find a correct alternative
> plural such as "subschemata".
>

I often catch myself mentally deducing marks from articles where they
use words like mediums (should be media unless referring to the
spiritual worlds), forums (although that one is correct but it seems SO
WRONG!). Maybe it is something to do with old age creeping up on me. I
also insert apostrophes wherever I can'.

Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

On 6 Jul 2006 10:19:08 -0700, "Alistair"
<alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>
>I often catch myself mentally deducing marks from articles where they
>use words like mediums (should be media unless referring to the
>spiritual worlds), forums (although that one is correct but it seems SO
>WRONG!). Maybe it is something to do with old age creeping up on me. I
>also insert apostrophes wherever I can'.

People who process data should know that data is plural. That's bad,
but at least our business isn't writing correct English, the way
people in the media are.

Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------
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Richard

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

shaky knees wrote:

> ... C++. But whenever we need the specifiers in a "printf" or the
> methods of a certain class, we look them up - right?

If you are using printf() in C++ then you are missing several points
about the language.

Richard

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

Alistair wrote:

> One additional thought, if you do not know the language intimately then
> it would be all too easy to write applications which rather resembled
> pigs' ears rather than silk purses.

Not knowing the language is not a requirement for writing pigs' ears.
OTOH someone who is unsure is more likely to copy what he sees around
him and thus write acceptable code in that it fits right into the site
standards. Follow the rule: If you don't know what you are doing, do
it neatly.

> A famous painter, when accused of
> charging too much for half an hours work, remarked that it was the
> years of experience and not the time spent on the one painting that
> their client was paying for.

PECD might relate that one person who posts here with a long experience
still writes the same pigs' ears they did 40 years ago.

HeyBub

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

Alistair wrote:
>
> I often catch myself mentally deducing marks from articles where they
> use words like mediums (should be media unless referring to the
> spiritual worlds), forums (although that one is correct but it seems
> SO WRONG!). Maybe it is something to do with old age creeping up on
> me. I also insert apostrophes wherever I can'.

Izz okay. As Lynn Truss points out in her book, "[The panda] Eats, shoots
and leaves" the number of apostrophes in the universe is fixed. If one is
absent from its proper place, it'll turn up somewhere else ("Managers
special on Friday's").

The preferred plural of FORUM is FORA (although "forums" is also correct).

Howard Brazee

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 15:06:50 -0500, "HeyBub" <heybubNOSPAM@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Izz okay. As Lynn Truss points out in her book, "[The panda] Eats, shoots
>and leaves" the number of apostrophes in the universe is fixed. If one is
>absent from its proper place, it'll turn up somewhere else ("Managers
>special on Friday's").
>
>The preferred plural of FORUM is FORA (although "forums" is also correct).

And the preferred plural of OPUS is OPERA.

Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.usenet.com

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

In article <1152215086.166777.282560@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
Richard <riplin@Azonic.co.nz> wrote:
>
>Alistair wrote:

[snip]

>
>PECD might relate that one person who posts here with a long experience
>still writes the same pigs' ears they did 40 years ago.

As I was taught it - more than twenty years ago - 'According to the
calendar there is no difference between having twenty years' experience
and one year's experience twenty times over.'

DD

Oliver Wong

2006-07-06, 6:55 pm

"shaky knees" <pvz@orange.nl> wrote in message
news:1152179381.529076.213560@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>
> I've been a Cobol programmer for over 30 years now, and my initial
> training at Honeywell Bull in those days took a mere three w

s.
> Report Writer and all.

I spent around two days reading http://www.csis.ul.ie/COBOL/ Supposedly,
I know Report Writer too (since the website covers it), but I haven't ever
actually tried writing a Report Writer program.

Then I spent a couple hours here and a couple hours there reading
through language references from IBM, Liant and others, depending on which
dialect of COBOL I'm supposed to currently be working with.

And of course, this newsgroup has been a valuable source of education
too.

I'm a Java programmer, but I write programs (in Java) which parse and
analyze COBOL programs written by others, so I need at least a superficial
understanding of COBOL to get my job done.

>
> This makes me wonder: cannot we safely assume that to an able
> programmer (in any computer language) the cobol syntax and
> peculiarities are no more than just another tool in the box?

There's some things that are "weird" about COBOL. (Probably for any
programming language in existence, there's some things that are weird about
it.) I can read COBOL programs pretty well, but I wouldn't trust myself to
write anything other than simple toy programs. Every language has its own
set of idioms, and it can take a while before one internalizes the idioms of
the language they're trying to learn.

>
> I have done a lot of job interviews over the years, either side of the
> table, and I have never dealt with an interview test yet. Mind you,
> this has always been for permanent positions - not for contract jobs
> for one or two months. For the latter, I might justify some sort of
> test. Maybe this is a matter of cultural difference on both sides of
> the Atlantic?

I was the interviewee twice, and the interviewer three times. I had to
do a test at one of the two interviews I didn't hold, and I was planning on
conducting a test for the three interviews that I held (but the three
candidates ended up accepting positions at other companies, so the test
never happened).

The test I took was written. I was lent a workstation, and told to solve
a couple of Java problems. I was allowed to use the Internet as a resource,
and had something like one hour.

>
> Anyway, I feel that for most, if not all jobs, programmers need to have
> some knowledge of the business as well as being able to express
> themselves in this or that computer language. And it is my firm belief
> that cobol is relatively easy to learn. (I am biased, though :-)
>
> So there it is in (my) order of importance:
> 1. One must be a programmer (you know the breed: people who can think
> in loops - there's probably a better definition floating somewhere out
> there)

I guess programmers need to be capable of abstract, logical thinking.
They need to be able to express themselves clearly and precisely (the
computer won't be able to guess what you mean), to tolerate and understand
pedantry.

> 2. One must have an understanding of the business (be it transport,
> media, news, financial)
> 3. One must have a working knowledge of cobol etc.
>
> Over the last few years it's proven more an more difficult to find
> candidates that are strong in all aspects for our job openings.
> Therefore we tended towards dropping the third requisite and sending
> the best candidate we can find to a full-time Cobol course. Our
> expenses.
> In other words, find a bookkeeper who writes javascript-enabled
> webpages for a hobby, send him off three w

s for a course, and within
> three months he's an equal player in the team writing an invoicing app.
>
> Please keep in mind that I'm certainly not saying that 30 years of
> experience counts for nothing. After all, we all learn new things each
> day. But I fear that I'm not that special after all.
>
> I like to think that all of you who are going steady with CLC over time
> are VERY much capable of writing a middle-of-the-road routine in say,
> VB or C++. But whenever we need the specifiers in a "printf" or the
> methods of a certain class, we look them up - right?
>
> Would it be right if we fail a job interview for that reason alone?
> Please share your thoughts.

I don't think memorization of "specifiers" should be relevant to
obtaining a job. Like you said, we could always look them up (and in the
test I took, I was allowed to look them up, having been given access to the
Internet). It might be worth asking a candidate about common terminology
though, just to see if they could communicate with the rest of the team
(e.g. If someone told you to "make the field private and add getters and
setters" or "turn this class into a singleton", etc. would you understand
what they were asking you to do? [*])

Every now and then, the Java newsgroups get spammed by someone
advertising their site with hundreds or thousands of sample interview
questions and their answers. Frequently, these questions are poorly phrased
and have ambiguous answer, or are completely meaningless. Other times, the
questions simply wouldn't, IMHO, serve as a good metric for determining who
would make a good programmer.

- Oliver

*: These requests are all Object Oriented Programming centric, so if you're
a COBOL programmer and don't know what those means, don't be too concerned.
;)

shaky knees

2006-07-07, 3:55 am

Thank you all for enlightening me. It appears interview tests are more
common than not in your experience. And I'll try, Mr Matthias, not to
abuse 'we' that often.
It also emerges from your contributions that being a good programmer in
one environment, necessarily means you can easily adopt to another.
There may be no quorum yet to call the conclusions scientific, but I'm
outnumbered anyway.

I must admit that I got a little distracted by some gems on the road,
some of which I'll try to remember for upcoming revisions of the
company standards. I hope you don't mind me using up virtual diskspace
and bandwith repeating them:

--10% of those who do things have [...] 'The Touch' and the rest are
just getting by.

--The Russian proveb has it 'a fish rots from the head'

--When there exists in a workplace two kinds of management, one bad and
one good, then bad management will drive good management out of the
workplace.

--90% of everything is crap

--Never use yourself as a comparative, you'll only be disappointed.

--People who process data should know that data is plural.

--The number of apostrophes in the universe is fixed. If one is absent
from its proper place, it'll turn up somewhere else

--The preferred plural of OPUS is OPERA.

--A famous painter [...] remarked that it was the years of experience
and not the time spent [...] that their client was paying for.

--Follow the rule: If you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.

Thanks, Peter

2006-07-07, 3:55 am

In article <1152257186.180025.319200@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
shaky knees <pvz@orange.nl> wrote:

[snip]

>I must admit that I got a little distracted by some gems on the road,
>some of which I'll try to remember for upcoming revisions of the
>company standards.

Gems, you say? 'Blessed are those who find treasures in pebbles; they are
constantly surrounded by riches'. There is one item, though, that might
be interesting to examine a bit more closely -

[snip]

>--A famous painter [...] remarked that it was the years of experience
>and not the time spent [...] that their client was paying for.

In the United States of American there is the old joke about the guy who
runs... The Machine. He worked in a factory for forty years, always on
the same Machine, and time came, finally, for him to retire. Shortly
after his retirement The Machine malfunctions and stops running... and the
rest of the factory halts because this vital piece of equipment no longer
works. Management contacts Old Joe and pleads with him to come back and
get this vital Machine back to running; Joe says 'Fine... but I'll have to
charge you for it.'

Management agrees... and Old Joe walks back into the now-silent factory,
all eyes on him as he approaches The Machine... he walks around it, steps
back, looks at it again...

.... and then walks up to it and hits it, once, with a hammer... and The
Machine starts running.

A we

later the company's Billing Office receives an invoice from Old
Joe which states 'Hitting Machine with hammer - US$100,000.'

This gets people rather... upset - they seem to have forgotten that
the entire factory had been stopped, memory works that way for some folks,
it seems - and they return the invoice and ask for a clarification of
expenses. Old Joe then sends back the following:

Hitting Machine with hammer........................US$25
*Knowing* where to hit Machine with hammer.....US$99,975

DD

Howard Brazee

2006-07-07, 7:55 am

I was a contractor at my current workplace. They asked me if I
wanted a permanent job, I said yes, and they posted the opening in a
public, but relatively unknown paper. After a couple of w

s, I
asked when I would be interviewed, and was told that I already
interviewed.

Michael Mattias

2006-07-07, 7:55 am

"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:q2nsa2trsr6p8jfb62d0kpbeod8mfbkppk@
4ax.com...
> I was a contractor at my current workplace. They asked me if I
> wanted a permanent job, I said yes, and they posted the opening in a
> public, but relatively unknown paper.

Sounds like some kind of "fairness" crap.

Hell, life itself ain't fair. They should have just offered you the position
and saved the 'fairness compliance costs' for something more important.

MCM

Pete Dashwood

2006-07-07, 6:55 pm

"Richard" <riplin@Azonic.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1152215086.166777.282560@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> Alistair wrote:
>
>
> Not knowing the language is not a requirement for writing pigs' ears.
> OTOH someone who is unsure is more likely to copy what he sees around
> him and thus write acceptable code in that it fits right into the site
> standards. Follow the rule: If you don't know what you are doing, do
> it neatly.
>
>
> PECD might relate that one person who posts here with a long experience
> still writes the same pigs' ears they did 40 years ago.
>
I hope you don't mean me, Richard... :-)

I can think of one other, but please, don't start me up :-) Besides, his
pigs ears are more elephantine than porcine.

Pete.

Alistair

2006-07-07, 6:55 pm

Richard wrote:
> Alistair wrote:
>
>
> PECD might relate that one person who posts here with a long experience
> still writes the same pigs' ears they did 40 years ago.

There are at least two candidates for that.

Alistair

2006-07-07, 6:55 pm

Richard wrote:
> Alistair wrote:
>
>
> PECD might relate that one person who posts here with a long experience
> still writes the same pigs' ears they did 40 years ago.

I might add that the pigs' ears that I write nowadays are very
different from the ones I wrote 40 years ago.

Alistair

2006-07-07, 6:55 pm

Alistair

2006-07-07, 6:55 pm

HeyBub wrote:
> Alistair wrote:
>
> Izz okay. As Lynn Truss points out in her book, "[The panda] Eats, shoots
> and leaves" the number of apostrophes in the universe is fixed. If one is
> absent from its proper place, it'll turn up somewhere else ("Managers
> special on Friday's").
>

I enjoyed that book and, whereas I used to use apostrophes
indiscriminately and invariably incorrectly, I now use them in only two
forms (possession and saintliness forms) excepting when scripting in
Unix when I revert to indiscriminate and invariably the wrong form.

Alistair

2006-07-07, 6:55 pm

docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
> In article <1152215086.166777.282560@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
> Richard <riplin@Azonic.co.nz> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>
> As I was taught it - more than twenty years ago - 'According to the
> calendar there is no difference between having twenty years' experience
> and one year's experience twenty times over.'
>
> DD

At the risk of heading into the nether realms of physics, just how can
you squeeze twenty years' experience into one year?

Alistair

2006-07-07, 6:55 pm

docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
> In article <1152215086.166777.282560@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
> Richard <riplin@Azonic.co.nz> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>
> As I was taught it - more than twenty years ago - 'According to the
> calendar there is no difference between having twenty years' experience
> and one year's experience twenty times over.'
>
> DD

Forget the last post; I just twigged what you meant. Thanks DD.

Howard Brazee

2006-07-07, 9:55 pm

On 7 Jul 2006 08:49:01 -0700, "Alistair"
<alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>
>I enjoyed that book and, whereas I used to use apostrophes
>indiscriminately and invariably incorrectly, I now use them in only two
>forms (possession and saintliness forms) excepting when scripting in
>Unix when I revert to indiscriminate and invariably the wrong form.

That wasn't my particular problem. Although I didn't agree with
everything she said, I enjoyed her book.

Here's a critic's review of her punctuation:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/bo...0628crbo_books1

Alistair

2006-07-07, 9:55 pm

shaky knees wrote:
>
> --The Russian proveb has it 'a fish rots from the head'

But the Romans of antiquity liked fermented rotten fish sauce, as do
the Koreans.

> --Follow the rule: If you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.

This is a variant of: don't stick your head up above the level of the
parapet cause you'll just attract bullets.

Alistair

2006-07-07, 9:55 pm

Pete Dashwood wrote:
> "Richard" <riplin@Azonic.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:1152215086.166777.282560@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> I hope you don't mean me, Richard... :-)
>
> I can think of one other, but please, don't start me up :-) Besides, his
> pigs ears are more elephantine than porcine.

I heard that!

Alistair

2006-07-07, 9:55 pm

Howard Brazee wrote:
> On 7 Jul 2006 08:49:01 -0700, "Alistair"
> <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> That wasn't my particular problem. Although I didn't agree with
> everything she said, I enjoyed her book.
>
> Here's a critic's review of her punctuation:
> http://www.newyorker.com/critics/bo...0628crbo_books1

The one thing that the book teaches is that it is ok to make "mistakes"
as, despite the reviewer's complaint, language is evolving and few
people are qualified or experienced enough to be able to correct the
errors with authority. Thanks for the reference.

2006-07-07, 9:55 pm

In article <1152287454.923001.158470@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
>
>At the risk of heading into the nether realms of physics, just how can
>you squeeze twenty years' experience into one year?

The same way those folks with bunches of adipose work their way into
corsets, I believe... or maybe it is like one of those pairs of shorts
that folds up into its own pocket.

DD

2006-07-07, 9:55 pm

In article <1152287507.786253.285700@s53g2000cws.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>docdwarf@panix.com wrote:

[snip]

>
>Forget the last post; I just twigged what you meant. Thanks DD.

Too late... I already got shorts with you.

DD

2006-07-07, 9:55 pm

In article <1152288188.005076.295250@k73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>shaky knees wrote:
>
>But the Romans of antiquity liked fermented rotten fish sauce, as do
>the Koreans.

Others, as well... see
http://www.recipesource.com/ethnic/...00/rec0039.html .

>
>
>
>
>This is a variant of: don't stick your head up above the level of the
>parapet cause you'll just attract bullets.

Ow... given the circumstances of this particular dictum (live fire in the
vicinity) I can agree... on the other hand I see it as being too close to
the Japanese 'the nail that sticks out gets hammered down' for my liking.

(A nail which sticks out can be a rather serviceable coat-hook.)

DD

Alistair

2006-07-08, 6:55 pm

docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
> In article <1152287507.786253.285700@s53g2000cws.googlegroups.com>,
> Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>
> Too late... I already got shorts with you.
>
> DD

Yes, I guess we can always count on you to produce an original reply. I
had expected something more mundane and literal. Thanks to the joys of
Google groups I find that I am replying before comprehending the
content (twice in two days). Of course it would help if the 8 hour time
gap between the UK and the US also applied to group postings.

2006-07-08, 6:55 pm

In article <1152364007.594508.206160@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
>
>Yes, I guess we can always count on you to produce an original reply.

Plural majestatus est, Mr Maclean... but curious that you should mention
that. Recently there was posted a list of 'important stuff I found in
this newsgroup' and it amused me that half the list consisted of stuff
I've posted over and over and over again... the originality improves with
every repetition!

>I
>had expected something more mundane and literal.

A bit early for that, things around these parts were closer to Thursdane
and Fridane.

>Thanks to the joys of
>Google groups I find that I am replying before comprehending the
>content (twice in two days). Of course it would help if the 8 hour time
>gap between the UK and the US also applied to group postings.

I'm not sure what you're calling 'comprehension', Mr Maclean, but I've
found that, for myself, things appear differently during their second
reddening than at their first blush. If you find that posting after (n
minutes) of reading causes you to make fewer 'Please forgive me, my hobby
is sexual asphyxia' postings then perhaps a bit more of 'What a curious
read that was... perhaps I should grab a (container) of (beverage) and
compose a reply' might be in order.

DD

Alistair

2006-07-08, 6:55 pm

docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
> I'm not sure what you're calling 'comprehension', Mr Maclean, but I've
> found that, for myself, things appear differently during their second
> reddening than at their first blush. If you find that posting after (n
> minutes) of reading causes you to make fewer 'Please forgive me, my hobby
> is sexual asphyxia' postings

How did you guess my hobby?

> then perhaps a bit more of 'What a curious
> read that was... perhaps I should grab a (container) of (beverage) and
> compose a reply' might be in order.
>
> DD

Sorry, no beer in house. Have beer will drink.

William M. Klein

2006-07-08, 6:55 pm

I once had a pre-job "test" that asked a VERY obscure JCL (IBM mainframe)
question. I answered it correctly (as I tend to like the obscure and trivial).
However, I also told the person telling me how I had done on the test that
anyone who relied on their memory for this type of thing was NOT a good
programmer in my opinion. (I go the job, if it matters)

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:8d8qa25hqlcu3c37ulmvpricicoesn5unt@
4ax.com...
> On 6 Jul 2006 07:09:33 -0700, "Alistair"
> <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Syntaxes is correct. I love it when I find a correct alternative
> plural such as "subschemata".
>
> Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.usenet.com

William M. Klein

2006-07-08, 6:55 pm

Long ago and far away, ....

During the VERY brief (11 months) period that I was a "contractor" (working
for a consulting firm that hired me out), I explained to my employer that I was
a

"move field-A to Field-B programmer and PLEASE don't ask me to get emotionally
involved with either field-A or Field-B"

(I didn't tell the perspective clients this, and I did tend to be sent to the
"same type" of business where my "experience" with that business model was
viewed as a benefit.)

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com

2006-07-08, 6:55 pm

In article <1152373152.370969.88220@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
>
>How did you guess my hobby?

Magic, of course... smoke, mirrors and a few mid-frequency lasers aimed at
windows to pick up conversational vibrations.

>
>
>Sorry, no beer in house. Have beer will drink.

Odd... what reason simplified sentence construction if no beer?

DD

Alistair

2006-07-09, 6:55 pm

docdwarf@panix.com wrote:
> In article <1152373152.370969.88220@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
> Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Magic, of course... smoke, mirrors and a few mid-frequency lasers aimed at
> windows to pick up conversational vibrations.
>
>
> Odd... what reason simplified sentence construction if no beer?

Why, a pressing need to look up certain types of deviant practices on
the net. It is not only procrastination that steals time.

2006-07-09, 6:55 pm

In article <1152453949.434518.99380@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>docdwarf@panix.com wrote:

[snip]
[color=darkred]
>
>Why, a pressing need to look up certain types of deviant practices on
>the net. It is not only procrastination that steals time.

Of course not; in the models generated by modern physics anything that
steals space does an equivalent thing.

DD

SkippyPB

2006-07-09, 6:55 pm

On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 21:40:09 GMT, "William M. Klein"
<wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> enlightened us:

>I once had a pre-job "test" that asked a VERY obscure JCL (IBM mainframe)
>question. I answered it correctly (as I tend to like the obscure and trivial).
>However, I also told the person telling me how I had done on the test that
>anyone who relied on their memory for this type of thing was NOT a good
>programmer in my opinion. (I go the job, if it matters)

My first interview for a programmer's position involved taking a test.
I was applying for an IBM Assembler programmer's position so they gave
me this print out of an assembler program that had assembled clean but
had a bug in it and I was told I had 20 minutes to find the bug. It
took me 15 minutes and a couple of buckets of sweat but I found it and
got the job. I've never had anything like that since and that was in
1976 or 77.

Regards,
////
(o o)
-oOO--(_)--OOo-

"Now son, you don't want to drink beer.
That's for Daddys, and kids with fake IDs."
-- Homer Simpson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remove nospam to email me.

Steve

Howard Brazee

2006-07-10, 7:55 am

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 16:14:50 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf@panix.com () wrote:

>
>Your citation, Mr Brazee? Sturgeon's Revelation about science fiction
>referred to 'crud', granted, but I was relying on the Jargon File
>definition ( http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/s/SturgeonsLaw.html ).

Let me Google:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/s/SturgeonsLaw.html

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/Sturgeons-Law.html

http://www.steveschroeder.info/

Howard Brazee

2006-07-10, 7:55 am

On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 12:37:46 -0400, SkippyPB
<swiegand@neo.rr.NOSPAM.com> wrote:

>My first interview for a programmer's position involved taking a test.
>I was applying for an IBM Assembler programmer's position so they gave
>me this print out of an assembler program that had assembled clean but
>had a bug in it and I was told I had 20 minutes to find the bug. It
>took me 15 minutes and a couple of buckets of sweat but I found it and
>got the job. I've never had anything like that since and that was in
>1976 or 77.

And the guy interviewing you got his bug solved!!!

2006-07-10, 6:55 pm

In article <rel4b25lvtiss8nnmfs015hnljc0olrpnp@4ax.com>,
Howard Brazee <howard@brazee.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 16:14:50 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf@panix.com () wrote:
>
>
>Let me Google:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

--begin quoted text:

The name is also frequently used for an adage that is more correctly known
as Sturgeon's Revelation: "Ninety percent of everything is crud."

[snip]

The first reference to Sturgeon's Revelation appears in the March 1958
issue of Venture Science Fiction, where Sturgeon wrote: "I repeat
Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of
wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the
worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that
ninety percent of SF is crud."

--end quoted text

Note that Sturgeon himself refers to the quotation as 'Sturgeon's
Revelation.

>
>http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/s/SturgeonsLaw.html

This is the same URL I cited, which states:

--begin quoted text:

Sturgeon's Law /prov./ "Ninety percent of everything is crap". Derived
from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said,
"Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is
crud."

-end quoted text.

>
>http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/Sturgeons-Law.html

Hmmmm... a later version of the Jargon File (4.4.7 vs. 4.0.0) which gives
the citing from march 1958 Venture Science Fiction for Sturgeon's
Revelation.

>
>http://www.steveschroeder.info/

--begin quoted text:

Sturgeon's Law, boiled to its essence, is "90% of everything is crap."
This law derives from an interview in which science fiction author
Theodore Sturgeon answered a question about bad SF by saying "Sure, 90% of
science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud."

--end quoted text

.... which was, as noted above, cited by Sturgeon as a Revelation, not a
Law.

Ah well... had precise reading been done on the first entry a bit of work
might have been saved. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law :

--begin quoted text:

Sturgeon's Law is referenced in Theodore Sturgeon's 1972 interview with
David G. Hartwell (published in The New York Review of Science Fiction #7
and #8, March and April 1989): "Sturgeon's Law originally was 'Nothing is
always absolutely so.' The other one was known as 'Sturgeon's
Revelation.'"

--end quoted text

.... but that would have shown us both to have been incorrect.

DD

Michael Wojcik

2006-07-10, 6:55 pm

In article <j51ta2pekod6f5215uoi7rvieqirtjeqp3@4ax.com>, Howard Brazee <howard@brazee.net> writes:
> On 7 Jul 2006 08:49:01 -0700, "Alistair"
> <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> That wasn't my particular problem. Although I didn't agree with
> everything she said, I enjoyed her book.
>
> Here's a critic's review of her punctuation:
> http://www.newyorker.com/critics/bo...0628crbo_books1

Oh, well. Louis Menand is a smart guy (he made some excellent points
when he addressed the MLA a few years back), but he can also be
wildly wrong, as in his infamous review of Ishiguro's _Never Let Me
Go_.

In that particular essay, he certainly scores several hits, but
others are very dubious (there's many a sentence containing a non-
restrictive clause not set off by commas and the better for it), and
his basic thesis that consistency trumps all ("[t]he main rule in
grammatical form is to stick to whatever rules you start out with")
is, depending on how it's taken, either under-formulated or crap.

English prose style is far too complex to be adequately modelled by
rules of grammar alone; that is, phrase structure does not provide
sufficient information to determine how best to apply punctuation to
serve the (sometimes contradictory) goals of comprehension, comfort,
and effect in the proportion the writer desires. Thus any such
"rules" must either allow for exceptions (which cannot be completely
specified, since they exceed the bounds of grammar itself), or they
must be taken as only provisional and advisory.

Menand rather strangely denies that punctuation has any effect on
prose style. Tell that to Joyce or cummings, Louis. And he claims
that punctuation no longer affects the normal reader's pace, which is
simply wrong, according to the studies of reading patterns that I've
seen.

Though I have no interest in defending Truss or her book (which I
haven't read), Menand's review also needs to be taken with rather a
large portion of salt.

All that said, I imagine even the most ardent descriptivist would
like to see more understanding of the history and effects of English
punctuation, particularly among professional writers. Then at least
we might be subjected to fewer abuses from the print media that
clearly arise from a misplaced adherence to misunderstood rules. (My
current torment is the "newspaper's false appositive", where an
adjectival noun phrase is treated as an appositive and set off with
commas: "City councilman, Bob Foo stated...".)

And I suppose that Truss's book and Menand's review can have a
beneficial effect in that regard, whatever their shortcomings.

--
Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@microfocus.com

The Utahraptor's been having a bad time here, and I'm to credit! I
wonder how long he'll stay? (I can't wait till he finds out I replaced
his toothpaste with A COMPETING BRAND OF TOOTHPASTE!) -- Ryan North

Howard Brazee

2006-07-10, 6:55 pm

On 10 Jul 2006 15:45:48 GMT, mwojcik@newsguy.com (Michael Wojcik)
wrote:

>Though I have no interest in defending Truss or her book (which I
>haven't read), Menand's review also needs to be taken with rather a
>large portion of salt.
....

Truss' book is more fun to read than Menand, and I don't feel as
guilty about not agreeing with everything she said.

>And I suppose that Truss's book and Menand's review can have a
>beneficial effect in that regard, whatever their shortcomings.

Sure, it may be pedantry to have people discussing grammar - but when
people *think* about communication and their audience, then
communication will be better. So I applaud both of them, primarily
Truss, because she was able to make her book a best seller, and then
Menand for reminding us that what she wrote isn't gospel.

Alistair

2006-07-11, 6:55 pm

Howard Brazee wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 12:37:46 -0400, SkippyPB
> <swiegand@neo.rr.NOSPAM.com> wrote:
>
>
> And the guy interviewing you got his bug solved!!!

I once met an accountant who had been asked at a job interview what he
would do (in re-arranging the department, etc). He didn't get the job
but the interviewers did implement his suggestions. A cheap way of
getting consultancy advice.

2006-07-11, 6:55 pm

In article <1152643635.698646.13330@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Howard Brazee wrote:
>
>I once met an accountant who had been asked at a job interview what he
>would do (in re-arranging the department, etc). He didn't get the job
>but the interviewers did implement his suggestions. A cheap way of
>getting consultancy advice.

I once had an interview that I sensed was going that way... question,
scribble scribble scribble, question... refine, scribble scribble
scribble...

.... but fortunately someone came into the office with Something Very
Important that needed to be attended-to... and I took that time left alone
to tear the sheet of the notepad that was left behind and head out the
door.

DD

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