Was: computer history stories - Now: Age discrimination?

Paul,

I want to echo your sentiment. Now that I am approaching 40 and feeling dinosaurish, it is nice to know that a large number of dinosaurs (or 'OraSaurus' as Don puts it) still exist.

Btw, I keep hearing of Age discrimination in the IT industry. Reading through these notes, is it fair to say that this is less true among DBAs?

As far me, started out in 79 in college with IBM 1620/Fortran and punched-card Input/Output trays (used to be able to read Hollerith code once upon a time!). Progressed to Cobol in my first job in 84 and later to XENIX/UNIX, and teaching the User *never* to use 'ior i' to 'startup' the V5 database...

John Kanagaraj
Oracle Applications DBA
DB Soft Inc
Work : (408) 970 7002

Listen to great, commercial-free christian music 24x7x365 at http://www.klove.com

• The opinions and facts contained in this message are entirely mine and do not reflect those of my employer or customers **

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Paul Baumgartel [mailto:pbaumgartel_at_mortgagesight.com]
>Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 12:35 PM
>To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>Subject: computer history stories
>
>
>I just want to thank everyone whose stories indicate that they
>are at least
>middle-aged--for a while (especially at my last job where the
>average age
>was about 25), I'd been feeling as though I was the last
>over-40 tech-head
>left on the East Coast.
>
>Now, as long as I'm posting, my "how-I-got-started" story:
>
>I majored in liberal arts and worked as a real-estate property
>manager for
>about 5 years. Encouraged by programmer friends, I took some
>classes, in
>Fortran, Intro. to Computer Logic, and DG MV/8000 assembly
>language. My
>first job, in 1981, was as an assembly language programmer,
>but not for the
>MV/8000; rather, writing firmware for the Intel 8085. I
>couldn't believe
>how primitive it seemed after programming for the then-state-of-the-art
>MV/8000. The experience, though, of working from hardware
>schematics and
>Intel data books was invaluable. You really know how a
>computer works when
>you've learned about asserting ALE (address latch enable) and
>strobing the
>address bus!
>
>Paul Baumgartel
>MortgageSight Holdings, LLC
>pbaumgartel_at_mortgagesight.com
>
>--
>Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
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>Author: Paul Baumgartel
> INET: pbaumgartel_at_mortgagesight.com
>
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-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: John Kanagaraj
  INET: john.kanagaraj_at_hds.com

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