[KLUG Advocacy] A user leaves....

[Adam Williams]

>>>>> I believe the author of the article has had almost exclusive
>>>>I'll buy that, and I believe that makes up the majority of computer
>>>>users in this day and age.  Those of us with multi-decade experience
>>>>with mainframes are in the extreme minority.
>>>Ialso buy that as well.  Hey, Bruce are you refering to us "older
>>>fahrt's" as being like dinosaurs ... almost extinct?  ;>))
>>Well . . .    :-)

How about we all just evolve into birds?

>There weren't that many of us in any case.
>Back in my dinosaur days, most computer USERS were programmers. If you
>really wanted to do something, you write the code for it, and used what
>you wrote.

I saw a figure recently that only 4% of the software developement
industry is actually oriented to producing 'boxed' software.  I think a
great number of computer-as-tool users are still programmers,  but a
computer as a productivity-application-appliance doesn't lend itself to
programmers.  Most of the time I want a computer to do something I still
have to do a least a wee bit of programming.

>>I have four more years before I can claim three decades of working on
>>mainframes (like Bob), but I started using Linux three years before Bob.
>>(and that's the most important stat IMO ;)

I've got ALOT of time left to get to three decades.  What year was 0.99a
released?

>That's probably right, time served on the current technology is fairly 
>important. I only started using Linux in April of 1997, but this is about
>my third go-round with UNIX systems. My first was in 1985... AT&T UNIX,
>in their 6300 box, 

Ack!  I met a 6300 once. Eww....

>and larger machines. I remeber learning vi on that thing,
>and WATCHING the guy from AT&T install the system (42 3.5 inch diskettes,
>which he took with him when the 3 1/2 hour install was done).
>People who complain about interfaces and interoperability would have loved
>THAT machine! :)

They had a contest at AT&T: Just how painful can we make the command
like to use without actually installing electro-shock devices in the key
board.