My screed against 'script kiddies' and what passes for 'IT pros' these days.

My (trying to control my angry) mind. | today | Me, myself and I

[Looking4Truth]

I'm not as pissed as I sound. Enjoy.

[fr_freak]

I worked in IT for ten years or so, and I was always disgusted at the number of co-workers who were incapable of figuring out the hard stuff on their own. In the one mega-corporation that I worked for, we literally had to write out explicit step-by-step scripts for what I would consider basic procedures (software installs, OS builds, etc.). Even then, we would have some people who complained in meetings that the scripts weren't complete enough, because there was something like a stage where a message box came up saying "Continue - yes or no?" and the script morons wouldn't even know how to answer the question because it wasn't in the script. I estimated the ratio of people who actually knew what they were doing to the script kiddies to be 1:4.

I have since developed an observation/theory that the level of technology is quickly outstripping the ability of most people to comprehend it and service it properly, especially in this age of dumbed-down public schooling and ideology-driven curriculum at the universities, and that includes ALL areas - computer, automotive, medical, etc. If we don't collapse from economic forces, I think we'll eventually collapse from lack of knowledge and intelligence to be able to keep our own machines running.

[wally_bert]

Same here except for the programming. I never could get anything to really work.

[dsrtsage]

I am considered almost godlike at my company of 20 years. I have done automation/process control for all sorts of large plants over a large amounts of PLC’s, from foxboro, to TI. To Siemens, to Allen Bradley, and a few randoms in between. There is no process issue, that I cannot think through and solve. However, by todays standards, I am unhirable in any other field, as I hate more than anything in the world, the current set of standard programming practices. When I look at any vendor program, that we are forced by whatever reason to purchase, all I see is pure crap. And the plants always want me to fix their pure crap. It costs less in my $126 an hour to junk and rewrite the whole thing, so that any changes they want in the future to take minutes, than it does for me (or the original vendor) to just fix that one problem they are complaining about. If I rewrite the whole thing away from the current “accepted” standards, the plant people themselves are suddenly able to make any edits they need.

I also write analytical software for both office and engineering needs. Used to do it in C, but came to like VB in my old age. Both have easy access to any major database, or even oracle. One funny story, was I at a plant last year talking to the operations manager, when my eyes kept going to some spreadsheets and graphs on his desk. They seemed familiar looking. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I picked up the papers. It turns out that they were generated from a program I wrote in 1992 in borland C for Windows 3.1 for a plant in remote Nevada, some 2500 miles away. I have no idea how they got it, had no idea anybody was still using it, but they loved it, and it was running on windows 7, and made perfectly beautiful color graphs on printers that did not in 1992. My question is why does that program (that did some pretty fancy number crunching, and did some pretty fancy compression for data storage (hard drives were very small back then) still work in 2011, when Microsofts own programs don’t work for more than 3 years?

[AppyPappy]

You old bastard

[olepap]

I sorted telephone records in 64K chunks using C. Those were the days. Sleeping on the floor. Fighting with Ray Mu, the other programmer. Very intense - It changed me forever!

[dsrtsage]

Sorry, did not “exist” in 1992, can’t see what I’m typing on this stupid phone, lol

[old-ager]

> Call me an old bastard or behind the ‘times’ but my quality of life is better than yours, I guarantee!

Heh Social Insecurity being paid by young people is helping keep a lot of old farts in the clover these days. Not necessarily you ...

[laker_dad]

My first programming was on a IBM 1130 in Fortran also on punch cards.

Same here, at LIT in Southfield, MI. First job at Chevrolet Info Systems in Detroit. They had an IBM 370? with a RAM meter that pegged out at a whopping 2 Megabytes!

[Looking4Truth]

Bloated code does not an application make... it just makes for a lot of loading loading loading. Visicalc - then Lotus 123 ran in DOS on 32K of RAM space and did magical things. Computers has 64 to 128 k of RAM - but an amazing amount of work was done. I had a word processor that ran on a PRE - PC S100 based computer - in a DOS like environment it was astounding in what it could do ... Today’s BLOATED WORD still cannot do what this little Word Processor could do ... Mountains of available RAM and Hard Drive Space just makes for bloated unresponsive applications with a thousand features that are used by the average user one time a year. I use the Editor in Thunderbird for all my document drafting - then dress it up in Word if I have to ... most of the time I don’t.

Damn, someone else who's used to the same things as me. I've been dealing with this kind of crap since DOS 1.0 (I also have exp in Unix and Apple before I start getting 'advice' from those guys :-)) and could do a 'kludge' work around when I had CONTROL. When I started working with the likes of WIN 3.1 I used to get pissed that the hard drive was spinning when I DIDN'T TELL IT TO! In the old days (old man talking, so what) the freakin' hard drive didn't just spin up at random and do "WHO KNOWS WHAT". That used to really get me. I'd kill processes and what not trying to get control of my system as it were and eventually just gave up, especially when the bloatware wants to do your thinking for you.

Most lazy Americans like that kind of thing anyway. And computers are now appliances like a toaster, any idiot can own one. /rant good today but off

[unixfox]

The problem these days is we spend more time fixing sh!t that’s broke on our computers than actually using them productively.

I’ve been running a computer business for almost 30 years and I swear it’s come down to this...

I’d rather have a hot dog stand. I’d be happier and certainly less stressed!

[MarkL]

If I'm not very much mistake, every pc out there is running an OS whose kernel was lifted from DEC by Bill Gates. So the legend goes (from a old time DECkie).

I've heard a much different story regarding "Digital," but it wasn't where MS-DOS originated, but how IBM became involved with Microsoft. It wasn't "DEC" (Digital Equipment Corp) but "DR," "Digital Research." And MS-DOS wasn't based on it, it was a competitor. IBM wanted to buy an OS for its new computer, and the owners of DR were too busy to see the IBM reps, on vacation, or refused to sign the NDR, depending on which story you listen to.

And not if it's running Linux, in which case quite a bit was was influenced by Andrew Tannenbaum.

Though you may be more correct that you realize. One of the chief architects of Windows NT, Dave Cutter, was was hired away from DEC, who was behind the VAX11/780 and VMS.

Mark

[Looking4Truth]

I also write analytical software for both office and engineering needs. Used to do it in C, but came to like VB in my old age. Both have easy access to any major database, or even oracle. One funny story, was I at a plant last year talking to the operations manager, when my eyes kept going to some spreadsheets and graphs on his desk. They seemed familiar looking. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I picked up the papers. It turns out that they were generated from a program I wrote in 1992 in borland C for Windows 3.1 for a plant in remote Nevada, some 2500 miles away. I have no idea how they got it, had no idea anybody was still using it, but they loved it, and it was running on windows 7, and made perfectly beautiful color graphs on printers that did not in 1992. My question is why does that program (that did some pretty fancy number crunching, and did some pretty fancy compression for data storage (hard drives were very small back then) still work in 2011, when Microsofts own programs don’t work for more than 3 years?

Good God man! I've seen the same type of piracy! The stories we could swap.

[ROTB]

>My good computer’s mother board bricked

Make sure you dust it with compressed air before giving up on it. I am typing on a laptop that “came back to life” in early 2011 once I did this.

[upchuck]

Nearly every time I pull up a web page it loads and loads and loads a bunch of useless crap and advertisements that I have NO use for...

I had that problem until I installed the AdBlock+ add-on for Firefox. Advertisements just disappear. Give it a try.

FWIW, you and I have similar backgrounds. Like you, I seriously question the direction of the industry today.

[ROTB]

It turns out that they were generated from a program I wrote in 1992 in borland C for Windows 3.1 for a plant in remote Nevada, some 2500 miles away. I have no idea how they got it, had no idea anybody was still using it, but they loved it, and it was running on windows 7

***

IT “Hall of Fame” nominee.

[ROTB]

Sorry, did not “exist” in 1992, can’t see what I’m typing on this stupid phone, lol

***

Everyone who read that far, knew that, and didn’t care.

Great testimony!!

[JRandomFreeper]

he's probably never even heard of Geritol.

Oh yes I have. I even know to keep the Icy-hot, KY, Prep H, and Fixodent carefully separated in the medicine cabinet. ;)

/johnny

[arasina]

Here's my problem. Nearly every time I pull up a web page it loads and loads and loads a bunch of useless crap and advertisements that I have NO use for or WILL EVER RESPOND TO!

Why, I was just thinking the same thing this morning! ;-)

No, really. Those scripts are horribly frustrating. It's as if a gigantic nest of digital cockroaches has infested the internet.

[Bob]

Back in my day, we coded in 0’s and 1’s, and sometimes we didn’t even have the 1’s.....and that’s the way it was and we liked it.

You had 0's??? That must have been nice. We had to make do with letter o's.

[Looking4Truth]

The problem these days is we spend more time fixing sh!t that’s broke on our computers than actually using them productively.

I’ve been running a computer business for almost 30 years and I swear it’s come down to this...

I’d rather have a hot dog stand. I’d be happier and certainly less stressed!

Brother, I hear you. I haven't done IT since 2001. At least a 'salaried' position. I've been a cook, mechanic, airplane detailer, painter, housekeeping in a hospital (that was a sobering experience) and several other things since then. Survival skills, baby!

I've never been happier. My rant was as a user this time. A user who knows the crap behind the scenes is more dissatisfied than a user who knows no better, no? Nice to see your post.