As I get closer and closer to the cranky old man stage of life I get pickier and picker about my monitors and office lighting. I also find supposed high end products intolerable. Anyone who reads this blog knows I write a lot of books. “The Minimum You Need to Know About the Phallus of AGILE” is off for final editing. I have two more books that are somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the … The Best Part of Low EndRead more
Information Technology
Posts relating to the IT industry
Posted inExperience / Information Technology
Making Sublime Text 3 Do COBOL
It’s a long way from an IDE like the script kiddie generation is used to. It’s also a long way from EDT on VMS, less of a distance from LSE though. LSE (Language Sensitive Editor) didn’t have color but it did have built in language HELP. Don’t worry if you don’t like the color, I just happen to like the Solarized color scheme. You can choose your own. The package control installation is broken. Lots … Making Sublime Text 3 Do COBOLRead more
Posted inExperience / Information Technology
“Priced Right” Developers Will Put You Out of Business
It seems the world is devolving into Keller MBAs and fake-reality television stars. Bottom feeding Keller MBAs have infiltrated every company it seems. They have the following main mantras Any job which can be done by two people can be done by one at half the cost. Do more with less. “Priced right” is the only qualification that matters. Even if they have a diploma from a different school, if they utter even one of … “Priced Right” Developers Will Put You Out of BusinessRead more
Posted inExperience / Information Technology
Why did the Intel Itanium microprocessors fail?
I really hate Quora making me join and follow 10 things I don’t care about just to answer this question. What a truly pathetic business model! You are probably too young to know the entire story. It’s one of bribes, misinformation, and corporate espionage on a scale that makes China look small time today. This is the story as I remember it after having lived through it. The story starts with the Alpha processor and … Why did the Intel Itanium microprocessors fail?Read more
Posted inExperience / Information Technology
Why is network-byte-order defined to be big-endian?
The big-endian question comes up on those Internet chat places young techies like to hang out in. To us old-timers it falls under the heading of “Kids these days!” Here is the tale for those too young to remember. Around 1987 AST Research introduced the AST Premium which won the InfoWord Editor’s Choice award. There were many different models differing in memory and hard drive capacity. If you had the Model 140 shown in the … Why is network-byte-order defined to be big-endian?Read more