I have a question??

At my age, I'am all schooled out. I'am school trained in computers. Repair and language. There so old that you might not have heard of one of them(Cobol and saal). Its been so long ago I hope I spelled them right. I was also school trained as a surveyor with 13 years of experience.

Cobol? Yeah I heard of that. It seems to be one of the staples of knowledge for a IT job. I do not know what saal is.

Saal was used on a unavac 1005. First gen. computer. Nothing more than a glorified card reader.

School, wow there's a blast from the past.....And actually doing a job outside the house, dare I dream?! I am a 38 year old with 5 flippen ankle biters ( well ok so one is taller then me and 18 goig on 5 ) but anyway, not me, I am on oldie but a goodie!

AngelEyez, there are a lot of us "oldies" on here Though I don't have any ankle biters (I have a live in qurad palegic mother in-law that makes the worst behaving ankle biter look sweet).
I first learned Cobol, RPG and assembler. All on various IBM mainframes and mid-range computers.
/me harkens back to the IBM/360 and all 32k of memory

Faramir...'quadriplegic'[quadruplegic in Oz]....

No ankle-biters, OR rug-rats here....I know what causes them...

Faramir, yes IBM 360-70, 360-125. RPG and also Fortran. But cocol and SAAL was me best. That was back in the early 70's. We also had a Burrows 6500. I don't remember any stand alone computers, just monitors and keyboards.

I guess I cant compete with Fortran, even though I learned it in school long ago

I'm in the IT business btw.

Well don't worry. I cann't remember Fortran or RPG. Maybe about a month I could remember SAAL and with about a week or two of brush up I could be ok in Cobol. But it's been 25 years since I've used them. I'am out of that field now, I'am a mailman now.

B.S. Biology, no real computer training except what I picked up on my own. The only coding I can do is zip and area.

Wise & Faramir.... I once had to write a word processor in FORTRAN (college assignment - sadistic professor)...what a nightmare!!!! I also used COBOL for a while -- gave it up when PC's arrived. Do you guys remember any of the lesser known languages? - like SNOBOL, ALGOL, LISP, forth, etc...

Peff: I don't know those languages. But you can't get much older than Saal. If your under 30 you probably never heard of it. It was a first gen. language. Worked with key punch cards. You wrote the program, then you had to key punch the cards and the machine read in the code off the cards. Talk about dimples, chads and all the rest of that Florida presidential mess. Thats what you had here.

I know what you mean Wise, my FORTRAN word processor was written on punch cards. The school I went to catered a lot to the military (I wasn't in the armed services) and even had paper tape machines for input. Those were the days.....programmers wore white lab coats and were revered...not any more....thanks Microsoft!!

I forgot about the paper tape machines. I was in The service when I did that. So we didn't wear white lab coats. We wore uniforms. Early 70's.

I knew some people in 1969/70 that were inventing computer graphics... I was dazzled by what they could do but felt it was beyond me since I hated math. I decided by 1985 that maybe I should direct my future in that direction so I studied COBOL and FORTRAN. After writing a couple insignificant stupid apps I realized I was not cut out to be a computer guy, I hated programming, and I'd be better off staying in the consumer end of electronics and doing my artwork with pens and brushes. One of the dumbest decisions I ever made... The consumer electronics industry became stagnant about the same time computers became a phenomenal growth industry.

DavidK, I didn't like the programming field. It was to confining. I wasn't the desk type. Ialso got into the repair side. White shirt, tie and black pants. Picture that and on the floor fixing a stores computer and POS. Can you picture how many shirts and slacks I ruined just because the company wanted to have that IBM look.

Closest to programming I ever got was writing a bicycle spoke-length calculator in Basic....[it worked, too]...but school was poking holes in little cards with a paper clip....wow...whizz-bang technology...

Now, writing scripts and step.rc coding for LiteSTEP is about as close as I want to get...

Been looking into C, C++, Java, Ruby, x86 assembler and 65c816 assembler (SNES) and still haven't found a programming language that makes sense to me (I understand how they work, but find them unnecesariy complicated). That and those stupid win32 api's which I do not want to learn.

Or in other words, I want to code up my own stuff, but it'll never happen.


Schoolwise, I just completed university last week, meaning I now am MSc in Industrial Design Engineering (or rather, its equivalent in Dutch).

Then again, if there's one thing I learned in school it's that degrees mean nothing.

I have 2 degrees and about to get a 3rd and I'm jobless right now. Over qualified for some jobs and under qualified for others.

It will always be about how you use your mind and apply what you learned. Degree's help when your in to get higher pay sometimes, but if you can not apply what you learned then it is worthless.

I am glad I learnd allot and can apply it. This hpefully will mean that even if bad times come I can come out of out better off then most.

No degrees here....had to make a living...but I do have 2 subordinates with PHD's and 3 with MBA's working for me

i'm outta school... mis major and microsoft drone... mcp, mcse, mcdba, and going for an mcad (ms cert. app developer). i'm 28 btw.