[geeks] [rescue] Mainframe on eBay

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
>Date: Thu Sep 22 13:33:50 CDT 2005
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] Mainframe on eBay

>> I have been campaigning here to get some sort of hands-on sysadmin
>> courses as required for graduation in CS.  But they're all
>> mathematicians over there, and they do NOT want to have to get their
>> hands dirty actually touching the hardware.
>
>Nor should they.
>
>Computer Science is a *theoretical* discipline.  Its practitioners
>*are* mathematicians (specialized mathematicians, to be sure, but
>mathematicians still).

(moved to geeks)

One of the schools I attended (to assemble my English degree ;^) had a huge debate raging in the Comp Sci department (in the mid-eighties) - should the school teach COBOL.

It seemed too "VoTech" for the department head, but the reality was that graduates were having a hard time finding work with their (then) obscure Unix/C programming exp...

Oh, how times have changed - now the schools are teaching Java, and that is what the job market seems to want... Except for all the companies that have legacy COBOL applications...