20 Nov
2014
20 Nov
'14
1:30 a.m.
A question for the ones that work in the industry and are working with
old mini and/or mainframes:
How do you teach a young IT certed person about the old minis/mainframe
that your department maintains?
20 Nov
20 Nov
1:34 a.m.
I guess it depends on each persons definition of mainframes. We have some old sun machines
that still chug along and I?ve setup a Solaris Zone for new employees to play with.
Letting them play with it (while keeping the critical portions secure) has been the best
way i have found to get people into it.
That and a lot of old reference manuals.
On Nov 20, 2014, at 1:30 AM, Tom Sparks
<tom_a_sparks at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
A question for the ones that work in the industry and are working with
old mini and/or mainframes:
How do you teach a young IT certed person about the old minis/mainframe
that your department maintains?
1:49 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Sparks" <tom_a_sparks at yahoo.com.au>
A question for the ones that work in the industry and
are working with
old mini and/or mainframes:
How do you teach a young IT certed person about the old minis/mainframe
that your department maintains?
I would say that the first thing to explain is the difference between today
and say 20-30-40 years ago. There was a time when most things were done
batchwise, as the systems were rather small (compared to today) and on-line
updates impossible. Forexample, one of the first machines i worked on, an
IBM 360/40 has a whopping 128k memory, 4x IBM 2311 drives (7.25 MB each),
and 8 tapedrives.
As recent as two weeks ago, I was in the netherlands to collect 2 harddrives
for Philips minis from the 70's 80's; each had a capacity of 2 x 2.5 MB
Long ago, programming was a form of art; you had to do with what was
available; today it is more like throwing tools together, and hope that they
stick :-)
/Nico
4:29 a.m.
You probably don't. What you need to do is get them in a learning mood, where they
want to learn, and then they may teach themselves. How you do this depends on the business
culture where you are and the person themselves, and the resources you have available.
When you say "maintain" what does this involve, hardware maintenance, software
maintence, admin tasks such as adding user accounts, backups?
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tom
Sparks
Sent: 20 November 2014 06:31
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: teaching young IT certed person about old minis/mainframes
A question for the ones that work in the industry and are working with old
mini and/or mainframes:
How do you teach a young IT certed person about the old minis/mainframe
that your department maintains?
11:33 a.m.
On 20/11/14 19:29, Dave G4UGM wrote:
You probably don't. What you need to do is get
them in a learning mood, where they want to learn, and then they may teach themselves. How
you do this depends on the business culture where you are and the person themselves, and
the resources you have available. When you say "maintain" what does this
involve, hardware maintenance, software maintence, admin tasks such as adding user
accounts, backups?
Dave
I would like hear some war stories......
the know-it-alls, the ph**k-ups, the clients from hell, etc
tom
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tom
Sparks
Sent: 20 November 2014 06:31
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: teaching young IT certed person about old minis/mainframes
A question for the ones that work in the industry and are working with old
mini and/or mainframes:
How do you teach a young IT certed person about the old minis/mainframe
that your department maintains?
11:48 a.m.
On 11/20/14 03:29 AM, Dave G4UGM wrote:
You probably don't.
I have to 2nd Dave's comment above.
I love being an IT person, but you have to have a continual drive to move
forward and succeed. Long, weird hours are not uncommon, and when you aren't
working, at least some of your free time should be spent training & studying for
what ever is coming up next.
And, typically anyone succeeding in the above environment should be rewarded for
their efforts, unfortunately, any financial rewards are tempered by competitors
from 3rd world countries happy to work for pennies on
the dollar.
If you want to plant a seed, or answer questions, thats great. But even at a
junior level, if you want to stay ahead, that drive has to be there, and there
is no substitute for it.
Jerry
What you need to do is get them in a learning mood,
where they want to learn, and then they may teach themselves. How you do this depends
on the business culture where you are and the person themselves, and the
resources you have available. When you say "maintain" what does this involve,
hardware maintenance, software maintence, admin tasks such as adding user
accounts, backups?
Dave
5:58 a.m.
A question for the ones that work in the industry and are working with
old mini and/or mainframes:
How do you teach a young IT certed person about the old minis/mainframe
that your department maintains?
I'm not working with minis or mainframes now but I did once. Some time after,
I had an interesting conversation with a young buck. His facination was
virtualisation products such as VMWare. He was surprised and very interested
to hear of VM/370 and what it was capable of decades earlier and even more
surprised to hear that its descendant is in use now for bang up to date
applications yet he had not come across it.
Minis and mainframes might be regarded by someone with a 1GB mobile phone as
obsolete/slow/difficult/irrelevant/restrictive/clunky or whatever but if you
can relate them to something they are interested in their attitudes can change
quickly.
Another angle is to appeal to their hacker instinct. Tell them about system
security. Get them to test it. I'll bet that having someone take a fresh
approach will turn up security holes that nobody knew about as well as getting
them to teach themselves about the system. A bit of guidance is required of
course to avoid them doing actual damage if they should stumble into something
lacking the appropriate protection.
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.
3509
days inactive
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participants (6)
-
alexmcwhirter＠mojovapes.net -
cctech＠beyondthepale.ie -
dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com -
nico＠farumdata.dk -
other＠oryx.cc -
tom_a_sparks＠yahoo.com.au