General IT Project Discussion (split from Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age)

[serfty]

What, ENIAC?

No, binary ... 8 switches all in a row on a panel with on or two rows of eight lightsand a few other switches and/or buttons.

e.g. on, off, off, on, off, on, on, off represents 10010110 or x'96' which can be either either data or an instruction.

Flick the switches to the required value and "Store".

 

[JetLagged]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Nothing wrong with programming languages such as Fortran, Cobol, RPG etc. Real programmers work with these languages....

Even amateurs doing IT as part of a wider degree - had to do a semester of Cobol at the Institute (yes, not the University) of Technology back in the late 1970s, including using the punch-card machine myself - thank heavens I was able to type.

It was once described to me that new systems are often modifications and improvements of old systems.

 

[JohnK]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

It was once described to me that new systems are often modifications and improvements of old systems.

Are you sure they are not "enhancements"?

 

[Nigelinoz]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Even though I am not that old myself I often get younger engineers having a joke at my expense because I chose to use a cheap and small device in something I am developing, but then they are the first to wonder why they fail to get the $$$ and don't get given the critical projects.

Remember that old programmers never die they just byte the dust.:mrgreen:

 

[rwatts]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

No, binary ... 8 switches all in a row on a panel with on or two rows of eight lightsand a few other switches and/or buttons.

e.g. on, off, off, on, off, on, on, off represents 10010110 or x'76' which can be either either data or an instruction.

Flick the switches to the required value and "Store".

Ahhhhh. Painful memories of loading bootstrap code into a Honeywell H200 from the front panel. The IBM rotary hex switches were quicker though.

Richard.

 

[harvyk]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Remember that old programmers never die they just byte the dust.:mrgreen:

And the prize for nerdist comment goes to...

 

[anat0l]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

And the prize for nerdist comment goes to...

Remember that old programmers never die they just byte the dust.:mrgreen:

And when they do byte the dust, they wither away, bit by bit.

 

[Mal]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

You've worked on an IT project before ,haven't you?

Haha, too many to count.

But that also wasn't the reason for the comment

 

[2muchplastic]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Good luck to Qantas. I am sure the project will run over time, over budget and will end up delivering less than what is wanted.

Any IT project manager who manages to avoid those three deserves every cent of his pay.

 

[NM]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

e.g. on, off, off, on, off, on, on, off represents 10010110 or x'76' which can be either either data or an instruction.

Wouldn't that be 0x96?

Good to see bugs could be injected even in the good old days

 

[kamchatsky]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Any IT project manager who manages to avoid those three deserves every cent of his pay.

The real problem is that all the sales people would make promises to the customer with delivery of projects in short time frames and lower costs, when the PM who did the original estimates have much higher cost/time. Once the solution is sold and sign it is up to the PM to clean up the mess. That's why the only way to recoup the money is via variation.

 

[medhead]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Don't knock FORTRAN!

I wasn't! that was a real

 

[serfty]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Wouldn't that be 0x96?

Good to see bugs could be injected even in the good old days

Hence the "... check ..." part

 

[oz_mark]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

The real problem is that all the sales people would make promises to the customer with delivery of projects in short time frames and lower costs, when the PM who did the original estimates have much higher cost/time. Once the solution is sold and sign it is up to the PM to clean up the mess. That's why the only way to recoup the money is via variation.

...and yet it is the sales team that are most richly rewarded. Meanwhile the delivery team has to move heaven and earth and the cops all the blame. None of this is unique to the participants in this project.

 

[jaffa]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

I have absolutely no idea what any of you are talking about! :shock:

 

[wandering_fred]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

For serfty I will vote for PDP-8 switches....

Ah the memories.
Early 1970s building a student information system (registration and grades) with a 8k word FORTRAN system. Late 1970s was a diversion to COBOL. Late 1980s building an FORTRAN system with calls to a relational database system. Manipulating character data and handling rounding was a pain in FORTRAN.

Apologies for the nostalgia. Maybe retirement in a couple of years will change my outlook.

Fred

 

[NYCguy]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

:mrgreen:

(If you don't get the joke, select the text between the $...$: $number shown is the largest unsigned 64-bit integer$

My God, that is so unbelievably nerdy, I think I'm going to choke. The sad thing is that it made me smile...

Dork alert!

 

[Flashback]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

My God, that is so unbelievably nerdy, I think I'm going to choke. And the saddest thing of all is that not only did I get it, it even made me smile!

Dork alert!

Gee.. do we all have some sort of a foundation in programming? Scary:!: :shock:

 

[NYCguy]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

Gee.. do we all have some sort of a foundation in programming? Scary:!: :shock:

Well, my first degree wasn't in programming per se, but in pure mathematics, so I've been exposed to a wide variety of stuff that most normal folk can't even be bothered to contemplate.

 

[straitman]

Re: Qantas Frequent flyer out of the stone age

I have absolutely no idea what any of you are talking about! :shock:

That makes two us here who are sane :!: :shock: