December 17, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Revenant (12/17/2011)
Today, they are called "visionaries" or "ahead of the curve."(This was a reply to SQL Kiwi.)
I more often hear them called "suckers", "fools", or "idiots". Not "saps" though, perhaps people think that the pun, no matter how apt, is in bad taste.
Tom
December 17, 2011 at 6:10 pm
L' Eomot Inversé (12/17/2011)
Revenant (12/17/2011)
Today, they are called "visionaries" or "ahead of the curve."(This was a reply to SQL Kiwi.)
I more often hear them called "suckers", "fools", or "idiots". Not "saps" though, perhaps people think that the pun, no matter how apt, is in bad taste.
The point I was trying to drive across is, whatever saves your career at a certain point ...
In any case, having been around for 40+ years, I dare to think I know what I am talking about. Having been on those Board meetings...
December 17, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Revenant (12/17/2011)
It is the old IBM tack "No one ever got fired for using IBM."Today, using SAP will not get you fired. Especially, when $50k per module lincese is less than a rounding error on your company's balance sheet.
That old IBM trick stopped working for IBM a while back - the company had become a bloated mess by the mid-80s, had suffered a pretty disastrous anti-trust investigation for more than 10 years, and had thrown away the lead that Codd gave it in relational database; people were getting fired for having bought IBM, because now that most software and services had to be paid for although hardware prices (which used to cover all software and whatever services IBM though you needed for free) it was far more expensive than the alternatives and often didn't do the job as well either - Oracle and Ingres were doing pretty well, and IBM's DB2 and SQL/DS were widely regarded as a poor third and a poorer fourth; it decided to plug SNA instead of its token ring or open standards, effectively placing itself in the dark ages of networking (well, it had to some extent already been there for more than a decade already, having had difficulty shifting expensive crap like the IBM3705 in any territory where there was any real competition since the early 70s) and people were scattering rival systems into what had previously been IBM only networks, in order to avoid being fired for sticking with over-priced backward-looking IBM. By 1995 it had shed 45% of its (1985) workforce and its gross revenue in real terms was in steady decline, and no-one would have dreamt of saying that you didn't get fired for using IBM.
I doubt that line ever worked for SAP: they never had the reputation that IBM acquired in its days as a giant of the computing industry, they've always been famous for stuff that is so complex it's almost unusable.
Tom
December 17, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Revenant (12/17/2011)
L' Eomot Inversé (12/17/2011)
Revenant (12/17/2011)
Today, they are called "visionaries" or "ahead of the curve."(This was a reply to SQL Kiwi.)
I more often hear them called "suckers", "fools", or "idiots". Not "saps" though, perhaps people think that the pun, no matter how apt, is in bad taste.
The point I was trying to drive across is, whatever saves your career at a certain point ...
In any case, having been around for 40+ years, I dare to think I know what I am talking about. Having been on those Board meetings...
Sure, there are some people around whose career was saved by some assistance from SAP at pulling the wool over the boards eyes.
As for time around, I wonder which of us has been around longer. 40+ years for me too (where + means plus a few years).
Tom
December 17, 2011 at 9:06 pm
L' Eomot Inversé (12/17/2011)
. . . I doubt that line ever worked for SAP: they never had the reputation that IBM acquired in its days as a giant of the computing industry, they've always been famous for stuff that is so complex it's almost unusable.
Tom
My point was that for about two decades an IT director could blame his failings on suppliers of the technology. Explaining that you went with say Informix over IBM (a decision endorsed at that time by the Board to save money) did not work and that you just had to switch to SAP with its Oracle technology often saved your bacon. Costs did not come into this equation.
So the still-wide base of SAP/Oracle is the long tail of this marketing strategy, to use the proper [marketing] industry term.
December 17, 2011 at 9:19 pm
L' Eomot Inversé (12/17/2011)
. . . As for time around, I wonder which of us has been around longer. 40+ years for me too (where + means plus a few years).
I have started on 2 September 1970, on an IBM 360/40 installation that was pride of the town: 128k of memory, 8 tape drives, and 8 2311 disk drives for a total capacity of then-incredible 60 MB.
That said, when we eventually and finally get together, I am buying. (I hope it will be Talisker.)
December 18, 2011 at 6:30 am
Revenant (12/17/2011)
I have started on 2 September 1970, on an IBM 360/40 installation that was pride of the town: 128k of memory, 8 tape drives, and 8 2311 disk drives for a total capacity of then-incredible 60 MB.That said, when we eventually and finally get together, I am buying. (I hope it will be Talisker.)
I was a little earlier - started for real 1st Oct 1967 with a strange assortment of kit: a Deuce (with a few bytes of memory and a few kilobytes of drum), a Marconi Myriad (can't remember how much memory, but not much), and an English Electric 4-50 with 128kb memory, 4 disc drives providing a total of 28Mb, and of course mag tape drives. But I'd been working and playing with computers a bit before that, working on RHEL's FP Orion 2 (cloud chamber image analysis) and then on Bristol U's IBM 1620 and Elliot 503 (all sorts of fun things - nothing really useful) while I was researching mathematical logic.
Perhaps it would be good to get together, preferably somewhere with a good range of whiskies. But I prefer Bruaichladdich to Talisker these days, or sometimes Lagavulin if the mood takes me.
My wife used to be a great Talisker fan (myself only slightly less so). I introduced it to her on the 3rd night of our honeymoon, at the Ferry Inn in Uig - the locals realised that we were newly-weds somehow (perhaps because while I was having a long discussion about Skye folk song with the local police inspector and obviously knew the island well, she was telling the landlady that she didn't speak a word of Gaidhlig and it was her first time in the island) so we couldn't pay for a drink that night and by the time we finished she was hooked on the stuff.
But I'm based in Puerto del Carmen these days, and don't plan to be back in the UK until May (but then will be there for between 4 and 5 months, unless Ann wants to go on holiday somewhere else for a few weeks). Whereabouts are you - it may be a long time before we eventually and finally meet.
Tom
December 18, 2011 at 9:18 am
L' Eomot Inversé (12/18/2011)
. . . Perhaps it would be good to get together, preferably somewhere with a good range of whiskies. . . . But I'm based in Puerto del Carmen these days, and don't plan to be back in the UK until May (but then will be there for between 4 and 5 months, unless Ann wants to go on holiday somewhere else for a few weeks). Whereabouts are you - it may be a long time before we eventually and finally meet.
I am in Redmond. There is a nice whiskey bar, Lot No.3, in Bellevue. They have a good selection, although some brands may set you back $25 per shot.
I plan to take some time off in 2012 and go to Europe, so I might fly via London and stay there for a few days.
December 18, 2011 at 11:31 am
Revenant (12/17/2011)
I have started on 2 September 1970, on an IBM 360/40 installation that was pride of the town: 128k of memory, 8 tape drives, and 8 2311 disk drives for a total capacity of then-incredible 60 MB.
Ah the good old days. I started with an IBM 709 (the only one of its kind) later released as the IBM 7090. No hard drives, but with 6 or 8 tape drives. Programming in Fortran. Next moved on to a 1401, where the installed language was Autocoder (anyone remember that obscenity ?). If my memory has not been corrupted I think the 1401 had 16K. Now the 1401 came equipped with a disc drive, consisting of multiple platters mounted in a cylindrical enclosure standing about 6 foot high, platters each about 4 ft in diameter, and the read/write heads driven from one platter to the next, using a stearing gear shaft (I believe made by the Ford motor company). Now the secret to getting performance was to attempt to keep all the necessary data on a single platter, for if the read/write heads had to move to a different disc platter - well how should we say it -- time to go out for a smoke or a beer, and if going from the bottom platter to the top one, heck you had enough time for both. Autocoder what a language, want to save the value of a variable, hmm first pick a memory location, point to that location and then save the value. That's right no VARIABLE names so you could not say X = 2 ....
Getting the 1401 to run Fortran, had to use a punched card reader, and load in the proper sequence 2 full boxes of punched cards (the Fortran compile). Data input - read from punched 72 column cards. But is was progress, for before those days we had card punches, and tablulators. Ever sweat wiring (programming) a tabulator.
No need to rant any further - after all my stomach ulcer generated by working in that environment has long since healed.
Edited to correct IBM computer model number
December 18, 2011 at 11:34 am
bitbucket-25253 (12/18/2011)
. . . Next moved on to a 1401, where the installed language was Autocoder (anyone remember that obscenity ?).
As in MLCM, IOCTL and the rest of it? 🙂
December 18, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Revenant (12/18/2011)
bitbucket-25253 (12/18/2011)
. . . Next moved on to a 1401, where the installed language was Autocoder (anyone remember that obscenity ?).As in MLCM, IOCTL and the rest of it? 🙂
If by IOCTL you mean input and output control - yes.
In Fortran, output was limited to either a printer or to a tape drive, and the most important to me was to the printer, heck I could read that and if in doubt break out my trusty slide rule to check the calculation.
Now I never developed any decent skill in autocoder, at the time I was a Mechanical Engineer involved in the design of rocket engines, and was only using the 1401 to perform engine design calculations. And having a boss that wanted an engine, I stuck to loading and running that Fortran I compiler. Which had its own short comings, such as not having some engineering functions. to say calculate the tangent of an angle and/or the log of a number. The one saving grace was IBM sold a few of these 1401s in the general physical vicinity and those of us engineers using the #$% computer developed our own self-help group and exchanged code (as punched cards) to trade functions.
December 18, 2011 at 2:00 pm
bitbucket-25253 (12/18/2011)
But is was progress, for before those days we had card punches, and tablulators. Ever sweat wiring (programming) a tabulator.
I guess "wiring a tabulator" is American for "weaving spaghetti for a tabulator" - I remember doing that back about 1961 (vacation job when I was in high school) but didn't think of the tabulator as a computer because a spaghetti board isn't a program store.
On the IBM 1401, was Autocoder actually worse that SPS-1 or 2? I remember 1401 as variable length decimal machine (so somewhat similar to IBM 1620, which was a contemporary - they both lasted from Oct 59 to around the end of 70, with the 1401 having about 90 days more lifetime than the 1620) but fortunately never had to programme a 1401, just look at its assemblers as a good example of how not to do things.
The youngsters out there won't realise that the 1401 assembler (SPS) was so bad that lots of people wrote replacements for it; or that the 1620 was a nice fast machine that could do an integer multiplication in 5 milliseconds if the integers to be multiplied were small enough (less than 100,000 for it to go that fast) and did integer addition not by adder logic but by using lookup tables.
Tom
December 19, 2011 at 12:04 am
SQL Kiwi (12/17/2011)
Are the people who use SAP called saps*?* A foolish and gullible person
In Belgium, most business users pronounce the product that way.
It usually takes them saying it 4 or 5 times before I realise what they are talking about...
Need an answer? No, you need a question
My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP
December 19, 2011 at 4:04 am
L' Eomot Inversé (12/18/2011)
Revenant (12/17/2011)
I have started on 2 September 1970, on an IBM 360/40 installation that was pride of the town: 128k of memory, 8 tape drives, and 8 2311 disk drives for a total capacity of then-incredible 60 MB.That said, when we eventually and finally get together, I am buying. (I hope it will be Talisker.)
I was a little earlier - started for real 1st Oct 1967 with a strange assortment of kit: a Deuce (with a few bytes of memory and a few kilobytes of drum), a Marconi Myriad (can't remember how much memory, but not much), and an English Electric 4-50 with 128kb memory, 4 disc drives providing a total of 28Mb, and of course mag tape drives....
You guys are definitely 5 times of my age & have 4 times of my job experience. <Bow Down>
December 19, 2011 at 7:07 am
Dev (12/19/2011)
L' Eomot Inversé (12/18/2011)
Revenant (12/17/2011)
I have started on 2 September 1970, on an IBM 360/40 installation that was pride of the town: 128k of memory, 8 tape drives, and 8 2311 disk drives for a total capacity of then-incredible 60 MB.That said, when we eventually and finally get together, I am buying. (I hope it will be Talisker.)
I was a little earlier - started for real 1st Oct 1967 with a strange assortment of kit: a Deuce (with a few bytes of memory and a few kilobytes of drum), a Marconi Myriad (can't remember how much memory, but not much), and an English Electric 4-50 with 128kb memory, 4 disc drives providing a total of 28Mb, and of course mag tape drives....
You guys are definitely 5 times of my age & have 4 times of my job experience. <Bow Down>
Hmmm.... interesting....
Based on the (almost public available) age of the two fellows you're somewhat between 14 and 16 years old. Hard to believe that you've been working all those years since Kindergarden (2011-1970 aprrox. 40, / 4 (factor of experience) = 10 years of experience, brings it down to the age of 4 to 6 when you started to gain "real" IT experience.) 😎 😉
Edit: assuming the expierence gained per year is a constant - which seems not to be true though...
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