Commentary on Competence....

[KD8TUT]

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Find your niche and excel in it. Doctors and lawyers call this method a roadmap to riches.

Exactly... after I left Apple in 2001 I went into Linux.

It has served me well.

Regarding the "playa"- his days are numbered. Management is not so incompetent that it's been unnoticed. His latest recommendation was to move the entire company into Microsoft's cloud through Office 365.

They aren't going down that road.

What boggles the mind is that a person would get into IT without loving it. If you do not love it- it will eventually kill your career if you want to do anything *meaningful*.

If you just want a j-o-b. Fine get your certs and sit on your ass. But in this company... that will not fly. It's global. And the implications of that are staggering.

I'm very proud of the contributions I've made to the industry. Some of them may have been used by people here... who knows- I do not keep score.

But I do lament the dumbing down. Sorry... it does not need to happen and it weakens businesses and the country as a whole.

[NQ6U]

I'm very proud of the contributions I've made to the industry. Some of them may have been used by people here...

I used to use the modem driver you wrote for the Mac.

[N8YX]

...But I do lament the dumbing down. Sorry... it does not need to happen and it weakens businesses and the country as a whole.

The business tech trend these days is towards "system integrators", and the ongoing S/W development roadmap has been one of "building blocks".

Assuming you're working in x86/x64 architecture: When was the last time you wrote an 825x-series device driver which does direct disk I/O? When did you last do this for a Windows platform?

We now have this neato thing called "storage APIs". Pass certain arguments to them and we can create, update, crypt and move volumes on the fly - let alone write data to them. From that one and many other blocks will be made "application APIs". Want an eCommerce site? Drag and drop a few things together on a GUI (think of a Visio business flow diagram) and the behind-the-scenes configurator connects and configures your components.

Using my example, you've now reduced the number of people who need to write storage routines from one or two per app to a few in total across the entire platform landscape. And this is where industry as a whole is heading. You've also reduced the overhead of creating SaaS-specific solutions to a small team of people who understand and can implement business logic, but aren't necessarily programmers. The tools can help them, much as CAD/CAM helps me machine an engine block.

[KG4CGC]

I think Kelli once mentioned an employer that wanted her to write something which would eliminate her job altogether.

[KD8TUT]

[WZ7U]

You're a horrible person Mike

Now you've scared 'Murica into cooking with wood

[WZ7U]

<snip> But I do lament the dumbing down. Sorry... it does not need to happen and it weakens businesses and the country as a whole.

Too late. Last election proved the hypothesis correct. We are doomed...

[KD8TUT]

You're a horrible person Mike

Now you've scared 'Murica into cooking with wood

At my age with diabetes... I'd be quite happy to be "cooking with wood". Sigh.

[PA5COR]

:) that was funny now howould believe that, eh, let me get back on that... i have a blond spokes woman somewhere in my ledgers.

[WØTKX]

I miss working with machine tool software.

Because it was not just a job.

My current supervisor constantly reminds me that she has more degrees than I do, and I need to pay more attention to project management. Because she doesn't have to to do management then. Has stated quite clearly that it is my job to please her, and she does not care about technology. If we buy it and it does not work, that is the fault of the vendor.

Wait, what? Who keeps authorizing these purchases?

Never mind.