go to conference, realize job is in the dark ages

[brianmanahan]

went to a software conference today and realized that there is so much cool stuff people are doing! and that where i work is literally in the dark ages in some aspects. some of the stuff people are doing, i will be lucky if we use it in 10 years, maybe 20. shoot, we still use some stuff that is 40 years old now.

 

[kranky]

The latest, coolest stuff isn't always the best solution for a business. We have lots of good ideas for applications but once you factor in testing, maintenance, training, integration with other systems, etc. the cost outweighs the benefits.

Plus, at a conference you are only going to hear stories about things that perfectly suited a particular problem and was a home run. Those opportunities don't come up that often.

 

[Dirigible]

Software shmoftware. Their pomes are so far behind yours it's not even funny.

 

[brianmanahan]

yeah, thats true. but having to translate all our data to and from cobol data structures gets freakin old!

plus with contracting/consulting it seems there is more opportunity to do different things more frequently. where i work people can end up doing working with the same technology on the same project for 10-15 years at a time. there is never any chance to reset your brain and move on to something new, you have to remember or find out what someone did 10 years ago and why.

its probably the best for the business, but i get sick of it. feel like doing some greenfield for a change.

 

[brianmanahan]

Software shmoftware. Their pomes are so far behind yours it's not even funny.

well thats a given :awe:

 

[ImpulsE69]

There's also the difference of greenfielding something vs trying to completely overhaul your entire environment.

It's much more difficult to make large sweeping changes to large environments in this 24/7 business era.

 

[JEDI]

went to a software conference today and realized that there is so much cool stuff people are doing! and that where i work is literally in the dark ages in some aspects. some of the stuff people are doing, i will be lucky if we use it in 10 years, maybe 20. shoot, we still use some stuff that is 40 years old now.

Win98 for-the-win!

 

[brianmanahan]

It's much more difficult to make large sweeping changes to large environments in this 24/7 business era.

mine isnt 24/7, it takes all night for cobol batch processing to run lol

 

[brianmanahan]

Win98 for-the-win!

way before win 98... i just saw a comment in some code a few months ago, it was dated 1982 O_O

 

[DaveSimmons]

This year's silver bullet snake oil design pattern will be next year's dinosaur shuffle.

The longer you do this the more development fads you'll see pass by and be mostly discarded with just a few choice bits harvested from the corpse.

 

[brianmanahan]

This year's silver bullet snake oil design pattern will be next year's dinosaur shuffle.

The longer you do this the more development fads you'll see pass by and be mostly discarded with just a few choice bits harvested from the corpse.

im no believer in silver bullets

but id take just about anything over having to work with badly designed cobol data structures that fail to properly model the business domain but are kept around due to the ridiculous cost it would take to fix them

everything ends up being a huge ugly shoehorn hack

 

[Ricochet]

I work in a company where one of the text editor I use on a daily basis doesn't even have word wrap. Probably implemented in the 70s. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[brianmanahan]

I work in a company where one of the text editor I use on a daily basis doesn't even have word wrap. Probably implemented in the 70s. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

that is so so sad

i am guessing you dont do unit tests or continuous integration then either?

 

[KillerCharlie]

way before win 98... i just saw a comment in some code a few months ago, it was dated 1982 O_O

Quite often I play around with Fortran code written in the 70s. Of course it was written to solve math/physics problems and Fortran is still heavily used in numerical computing, but still...

I would take Fortran over Cobol though!

 

[Ricochet]

that is so so sad

i am guessing you dont do unit tests or continuous integration then either?

Nope. This text editor is used in manufacturing for QA to write discrepancy, Engineering to provide repair dispositions and ME/Planner to write the orders that is finally given to the shop.

 

[Saint Nick]

I support some Cobol stuff on an enterprise app (Asset Suite). It's a piece of shit. Some new technology came out in recent years by NextAxiom that essentially creates an XML layer between the programmer and Asset Suite. Pretty nice stuff, but the underlying code in Asset Suite is as old as Cobol.

 

[blackdogdeek]

I doubt your company will make the environment better so the only solution is for you to find another company with a better environment.

 

[Texashiker]

where i work is literally in the dark ages in some aspects.

And? Our accounting department still uses a novell server from around 1994. We bought a new server, bought new software, but the accountant likes the old software. I told him when the server crashes there will be no way to fix it.

There was a blog posted on Intel.com about how intel was moving to windows 7. Some of the software they were using was 10 - 15 years old. To update the software was going to cost around $15k - $20k. The guy posting the blog said it felt strange for intel to be a world leader, but still using software that was a decade old.

 

[purbeast0]

this go around at my job we're actually totally rewriting our application using newer technologies to make it more modular. it is very interesting. we just started on it within the past week after another team fleshed out the architecture and tech. definitely going to be a learning curve but it's fun to learn new things.

it's actually pretty neat. it is a web application and we're going the route to make the backend hot swappable. which has cool features in that you can update the webapp without the end user even having to refresh their browser webpage.

 

[Linflas]

Quite often I play around with Fortran code written in the 70s. Of course it was written to solve math/physics problems and Fortran is still heavily used in numerical computing, but still...

I would take Fortran over Cobol though!

I loved FORTRAN, spent 5 years working at NRL coding in FORTRAN 77 on a VAX 11/780. Sadly it is not a very in demand skill in 2013. I know how the OP feels though, we are still using Novell here.

 

[FallenHero]

I feel bad for the IT guys at my place. They get the budget to buy new computers, but have to somehow fix/patch/pray that the 20 year old software that they have to install because the village won't upgrade certain things works with the new stuff. WinXP does not like 16 bit programs one bit.

 

[dank69]

I go through this every year. At least I get a free trip out of it.

 

[NuclearNed]

Over the last year, I've had the opportunity to work with the latest release of a big enterprise software package that is bleeding edge. I went to a conference a few months ago - the stuff we're doing is beyond what many of the presenters were even talking about. Some of us on the team have been joking about how we ought to go into consulting and make the big bucks, because we're literally blazing new trails and have knowledge that few others have at this point.