... and they can also put 'programming' back in 'systems programming' -
instead of calling 'systems administration' ... well, you guessed it <grin>
Elardus Engelbrecht wrote:
John McKown wrote:
Not too surprising to me. I imagine this is the norm for today because a well
educated, intelligent, worker costs a lot more than a preprogrammed drone.
Agreed.
Our profession is rife with people capable of performing procedures they've
been taught, but incapable of thinking through a problem. Here's what we need
to do.
They can also put 'Analysis' back in 'System Analyst.
I have seen many times those 'PC boffins' can do this at most: 'click a mouse'.
It annoys the sh*t out of me just to see them moving the mouse arrow and click
here, click there, click again here and there, without the faintest idea what
the results of those clicks are supposed to be. They surf from one menu item to
the other, from one dialog to the other and eventually give up, promise to come
back.
Of course, they don't come back because of cluenesses.
Mind you, third party products like AbendAid (disclaimer - I don't have it) is
a boon, but if you want to analyze abends yourself, please feel free to turn it
off to polish up your skills. There in lies the trick. Know when to use an
advanced tool to help you (speedy problemsolving) or just try to check out the
problem yourself (analysis/careful solving).
But using one tool after the other, reading e-books one after the other without
grasping the deeper details are in my humble opinion not the time worth. This
is where training can come in to help.
I believe a well trained person, while being more expensive, can be more
productive with or without tools/books. And be able to give a good polished
solution.
I rather not say anything about the errors [1] inside a spreadsheet program
like Excel, which will be missed if you're not extra special careful. Even for
that, there are specialised software to help you to spot errors in a
spreadsheet. A well trained spreadsheet user will catch those errors without
resorting to these tools.
I agree with John, it is a sorry state, do you remember the very high-valued
IBM-MAIN member who has to close his training business?
Why? Costs - back to John's statement.
Ok, it was just my rhetorical rant, back to you...
Groete / Greetings
Elardus Engelbrecht
(Where are weekends made? In China, because weekend just don't last that long!
;-D )
[1] - propagating of rounding errors. Mixing of numbers of different magnitude.
Iterations done wrong or start at wrong point. etc. Intristic inaccuracy of
certain formulas. etc.
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