10 dying IT skills (No matter how good you are with these skills, you won't get a job today)

Tech Republic ^ | June 28,2009 | Linda Leung

[loungitude]

Vacuum state...?
Empty state?

[gura]

Just learn to love and embrace UNIX in all of it’s forms and grow a beard.

[Current Occupant]

Not much CICS but yah I could do it. I was known as Mr. Cobol and Mr. 4GL. Damn I loved almost all languages except UNIX and IBM’s JCL.

[UCANSEE2]

When I was learning programming languages, I heard this remark.

In Assembler you tell the machine what to do.
In Fortran you ask it what to do.
In Cobol, you get on your knees and beg it.

[rdb3]

COBOL? Fuhgedaboudit.

Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.

Oh, dear...

[Glenn]

We do an amazing amount of work to accomplish absolutely nothing.

We actually accomplish what we plan. But sometimes the plans just aren't serious enough to challenge some engineers.

[Know et al]

I took COBOL in college. I enjoyed using it. I think it is a great first introduction to programming.

[ShadowAce]

[Nervous Tick]

>> Sounds like the kinda guy you wouldn’t want to be in the same boat with.

:-)

[zeugma]

* Sharepoint

Where perfectly good information goes to die.

[Will we know the moment]

Anybody out there ever hear about ALGOL, NELIAC or maybe pr155 autocoder?

[w1andsodidwe]

Well we only have one small system still in Cobol, but now everything is so fragmented, that most programmers only know the skills necessary for what they work on and can’t easily be pulled to work on something else. That was the beauty of an all Cobol world. Anyone could at least read and change any Cobol program, now you’ve got to have access to whatever interface in being used to even get to the programs. It is asinine. I loved programming Cobol, but left it behind and now do remote laptop support and some PowerBuilder and some VBA and several other things. Whatever, after 30 years, it is nice to always have something new and different facing you. Throw away the old and embrace the new.

[w1andsodidwe]

Gee, how about 360 assembler and JCL? I guess I am finished.

Ah, takes me back to the good old days, when we were real programmers. I challenge anyone today to work on one of those. God, I don't miss the keypunch.

[Moonman62]

If you spend the time to keep yourself current, you'll be alright.

Many techies who work for corporations are on constant death marches. There isn't the time or energy to keep current.

[SuperLuminal]

""So every time I go out on a contract another COBOL system dies."

Dang! A contract-killer for-hire freeper .....

[Hop A Long Cassidy]

>>>029 keypunch

Real programmers used the 026 keypunch. No printing on top, just the punches.

[RebelTex]

Hmmm, guess I may need to migrate from Pascal.
;>D

[PuzzledInTX]

Let’s not forget our keypunching skills!

keypunch? what’s that?! These kids nowadays! no respect for what we had to go through to get where they are today.

[grey_whiskers]

Just learn to love and embrace UNIX in all of it’s forms and grow a beard.

That's me.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Cheers!