From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_DATE, MSGID_SHORT,REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC,SYSADMIN autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!tuck From: tuck@iris.ucdavis.edu (Devon Tuck) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: "Software Fantasyland," and Government Agencies Summary: Life as a programmer/software developer at the HEC. Keywords: Programmer experience, Software develoment anecdote Message-ID: <3734@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> Date: 26 Feb 89 20:39:05 GMT References: <6660@siemens.UUCP> <37181@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu Reply-To: tuck@iris.ucdavis.edu (Devon Tuck) Distribution: comp.lang.ada Organization: US Army Core of Engineering, Hydrologic Engineering Center Davis, California List-Id: The Hydrologic Engineering Center where I work in Davis, CA. is the primary source of computer programs in the field of hydrology. We have about 50 people working with us, and out of all of those, there is exactly one and one half of a staff member with a degree in computer science. The "one" has a masters degree, and has been permanent for many years now; the "half" is a masters candidate from Sac State. I am the only other person who is close to having a degree in CS, and am the only undergraduate working for the HEC. The language of practice (not fully the language of choice) at the HEC is Fortran 77. Only now, that I set up and am doing conversions to, a XENIX system, are we really doing a substantial amount of C programming. What I find shocking is similar to what the previous message just mentioned: many of the staff actually started out with very little formal education, and slowly worked their way up to programming positions, or system administration positions. A good example is our system administrator for our Harris 1000 (uggh) mainframe. He started out as a truck driver :-) Even more entertaining is the method by which a Core Fortran application is maintained for several different computers and compilers. These programs were written in F66, translated to F77, and then modified for 3 other compilers and machines. What is shocking is they maintain a single program so that it works on all three simultaneously. How do they do that? Well they simply comment every "set" of code, that is specific to a certain machine or compiler, and then they put 1 to 3 letter tags in the unused 73rd column. When modifications are done, they make them to a main program, then run a batch-text processor on the source, and BAMM! they have a new version. This means that when we need to modify part of the program, we have to do it simultaneously for 3 different compilers or machines :-( If our staff were forced to use something like ada, I believe life would be alot easier. Unfortunately, there is no way they will spend the money to sit down and translate already working programs, nor will they deem it necessary to retrain the entire Core who use our programs so they may make their own modifications in the new language. ("If it works, don't fix it!") Devon Tuck (tuck@iris.ucdavis.edu)