Summary

A seasoned programmer reflects on their 40-year career, sharing insights on what they did right, the importance of standing out in the field, and expressing regret over not pursuing UNIX and IBM opportunities earlier.

Abstract

The author, with a background in construction, stumbled into programming and became hooked, pursuing a career in the computer industry. They took on multiple part-time jobs related to computing while in college, which provided a competitive edge post-graduation. The author's first professional exposure was to the HP3000 system, followed by a brief stint with UNIX. They advise new developers to consider the stability and prevalence of UNIX and IBM systems in the industry. The article concludes with the author's acknowledgment of the transient nature of programming languages and the enduring value of foundational technologies like UNIX and IBM, while also expressing contentment with their career choices despite the would-haves.

Opinions

The author believes that gaining work experience through part-time jobs and extracurricular activities while in college was crucial for their career success.
They express regret over not staying longer with a UNIX-based company, recognizing the widespread use and growth of UNIX and LINUX.
The author suggests that a career involving IBM technology is stable and lucrative, with opportunities to work with both legacy systems and modern languages.
They highlight the advantage modern developers have with free learning resources like YouTube, which were not available during their early career.
The author advises current and aspiring developers to seek stability in their careers by engaging with industry standards such as UNIX and IBM, while also staying current with newer technologies.

Programming For 40 Years — What I Would Do If I Could Start Over

Yes, it is the old “If I knew then what I know now”

What I did right in the beginning

Working in construction, I decided to start college with no idea of what I wanted to major in. Accounting or architecture were the front runners. Not talked about much back then was a career in the computer industry. I found that all the elective courses applied to all three careers,

I thought I would start with computers as the major and I could switch later if I did not like programming. But I was hooked and pursued computers.

Standing out from the crowd

Lots of students were taking computer courses and I needed an advantage as I was about 10 years older than the average age. I took a job working in the lab of a room with 30 terminals in it just helping other students with changing printer paper, copying files to diskettes, etc.

I found the computer club was not active anymore, so I decided to start that up again. I did not know what I was doing, but it was another notch on the “hire me” belt. A company was looking for a student to do early morning tape backups, so I took that work also. A professor then took a liking to me and asked me to work part-time to help replace a minicomputer used in a municipality. Now I had 3 part-time jobs equaling full-time while going to school full time.

All of the above gave me an advantage over the other students. When we all graduated, I already had work experience while the others did not.

My first system exposure — HP3000

The first job interview and an offer were for a small company using the HP3000 technology with COBOL. Since the IBM PC was just being introduced, there were no jobs available yet. Back then it was usually mainframe COBOL, Fortran, or Assembly Language. The job paid almost double the salary I was paid in my construction job, so I took it.

I worked at various companies with the HP3000 over the years. I even went independent for a while. This kept me working for over 37 years until the new CEO of Hewlett Packard decided that the HP300 line of computers didn’t make them a lot of money. So, they decided to discontinue the line. Put a lot of developers out of business and left the customers high and dry.

My second system exposure — UNIX

I worked for a UNIX-based company. Unfortunately, I found that they lied to me about my future there. I started to learn UNIX but was not there long enough to become proficient. I left the company since any advancement for me would not occur in the company. However, this is the one company I regret not staying with for a longer period for more experience in UNIX.

What I wished I knew #1 — UNIX

Check the statistics for UNIX and LINUX running on mainframes and Personal Computers (PC)

They are similar in structure as far as commands are concerned, so knowing one or the other is beneficial. There are other variations of LINUX such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc., so there is a wide range of companies using them.

UNIX and LINUX are still growing in popularity over time.

What I wished I knew #2 — IBM

Looking back, I wished I had received my first job offer out of college from a company using IBM technology. This is one of the most stable careers for a developer to have.

Do not exclude your research into IBM, the elephant in the industry. Many of the larger companies are IBM-based. This is a perfect opportunity to have a stable job as they will not be replacing the systems for a long time if ever.

What is great now about IBM is that they will employ coders that also know the newer languages. These languages are used as front-end interfaces with the back-end IBM mainframes. So, you get the best of both worlds if you are a developer.

Learning resources

The advantage developers have today that I did not have, was the number of free resources to learn any part of the computer industry. I could only buy books for a topic which would become expensive if you found out that it was not what you wanted to do.

With YouTube and other web-based companies offering free training, you can get a feel for using the tech before you commit to it. You can find what you enjoy doing easier today. On the other side, you can eliminate what you do not like.

Conclusion

Today’s programming “languages” keep changing all the time. You could be out of date before you know it. Get something stable in your life with UNIX or IBM. Again, most companies want you to know other newer languages.

The mainframe type of jobs on industry standards will usually pay around $11,000.00 more than developer jobs. I do not regret the career I have had with developing software for the HP3000 systems. But I would have rather been involved with IBM or UNIX — if I knew then what I know now.

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