State of the Market

[Protagoras]

got wrong techs then, or windoze DCs

What I see happening here is that 'we' are reduced to in-fighting, be it about technical skills, nationality or whatever. It's not nice and it's not helpful.

Our challenge is that with no credible government willing to invest in the UK to rebalance and grow our economy it's becoming 'every man for himself'.

We're being punished by successive governments' policies aimed at supporting their favoured skakeholders to the detriment of UK workers. Half a century ago it was manufacturing and heavy industry. Later is was utilities (read essential public services). Time moved on and it's been our turn for a while now. There's a pattern here ...

Government policies set the basis for costs in the economy. They've driven out business and they're driving out people. Even if we had an election tomorrow, I don't see any party with the vision to make the levels of investment necessary, rather we'll probably just have more rent-seeking privatisation, driving up our costs (and taxes) in a spiral of decline.

There are probably only two camps; those with the skills to survive and those with the funds to opt-out. Certainly there's no point holding out for better days; they're behind us.

[malvolio]

i don't do applications.

It's not about applications. It's about efficient use of COBOL. Or if that's too difficult, it's about lateral thinking.

[Dorkeaux]

Nor should you. We use the skills we have to their best effect. obviously. On occasion I'm tempted to dig out my old ANSI 74 COBOL skills and see how I get on*!

Just acknowledge that all the other skills are no less critical. We're all here to service the business, after all.


Nice challengefor us oldies. Write a COBOL subroutine to test for leap years up to year 9999. You can't use a DIVIDE statement. Or a number 4...

Sorry, but I expect that when I propose a solution that doesn't use the DIVIDE statement nor a constant of 4 you'll say it's wrong and drip feed in some other requirement that fits only the answer you came up with.

Not my first rodeo.