1237a09c777b
tech



Hello Wayne - 

--8<--cut 

WC>> :-( Damned administrator reconfigured the network so we
WC>> couldn't access the A drive to save files or work at home
WC>> making me wonder why all us students had blown around
WC>> three grand on computers $YU%UY&$!!{at}! 

CA>> Many who agreed to teach programming were actually
CA>> computer systems retailers developing a market for
CA>> themselves. The programming success or failure was of no
CA>> real consequence to them. 

WC> George was actually a very smart business investment broker
WC> and no programmer at all. "Abilities" had, just my luck,
WC> decided to switch from real programming to Windows GUI BS
WC> for secretarial tasks when I got aboard so the program just
WC> disintegrated under me. 

I was 'programming' when few people had any idea what that
meant and didn't believe me when I said I was exchanging
messages around the world with people in other countries. In
those days the average American had no idea how many other
countries were teaching English to their population. 

I have lost job opportunities because of this. Corporations
wanted people they could train to do it their way and ONLY
their way. They did not want to argue with people like me who
knew other ways of doing the work. They intentionally hired
people with NO experience programming at all. 

WC> Bob Sullivan and Wendy Perry as well as Ron the real
WC> programming instructors left after my first couple months.
WC> Ron was the C and *nix, SCO, guru and I was a VERY fast
WC> study under his, unfortunately very brief time there.
WC> George picked up programming pretty fast but it's not cool
WC> having an instructor a chapter ahead of you and sometimes
WC> claiming "you can't do it that way" when that's precisely
WC> how it's spelled out in the same book we're all using. I
WC> mean I once pissed George off when he and I argued over DOS
WC> when he maintained "cd" in DOS wouldn't perform the same
WC> function as Linux "pwd"in Linux, discouraging :-( George of
WC> course was quite wrong. 

Interesting you should use that as an example. When writing a
batch file recently I needed a way to send the current
directory to stdout and was perplexed not wanting to use a
dosnix binary. I wanted this to be a generic batch file for
MSDOS. I 'discovered' that "cd" with nothing else on the line
would do this much to my astonishment. I had never noticed this
before after decades of using MSDOS. Life is strange. 

One of the "TAG Team" that wrote TAG BBS when he was about 15
or so took a PASCAL programming class in his HS. Very advanced
school to even offer this btw. After some disagreements with
the teacher he was finally given the task of teaching the rest
of the year while the 'teacher' sat and watched. He enjoyed the
'power' but I felt badly for him wasting his time and not
learning anything new. He eventually became the lead programmer
here in Mich for Oracle and is now an independent Oracle
consultant. 

>
>        ,                                        ,
>      o/      Charles_Angelich  - DOS Ghost       \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >  www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/faf/  < \   __\__
 

___ * ATP/16bit 2.31 * 
... DOS the Ghost in the Machine! http://www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/

--- Maximus/2 3.01