Modern Workplace IT SkilLS
September 10th 2025
The baseball manager Earl Weaver once said, ‘It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.’
Miscellaneous Gems - a mix of things that you might like
Dead Man Walking ?
It was Mark Twain who said that the story of his death was exaggerated. The death of the mainframe is similarly treated, despite the fact that most adults use one at least weekly and many daily, sometimes several times a day.
Not bad for an electronic dodo, is it? What accounts for the longevity of the mainframe ?
Simple, the software on it was developed over years and is what is called monolithic form, and migrating it from a legacy design with a legacy language (mainly COBOL) to the 'modern' web environment is an unenviable task.
One reason is that it is more often than not mission-critical for the users of it and a failure to operate perfectly and seamlessly with other systems which interface with it is unthinkable. Unthinkable, that is, apart from the people who say they can do a migration 'just like that'. Beware of them.
Take a long look at the link in the button below to get a feel for what is said above. The messages are very convincing.
This very important computing subject is, like HPC, notably absent from most computing curricula. It is disingenuous to deny student knowledge of a possible career, so why do practically all courses do it?
IT Viewpoints
It is easy to provoke an argument over; 'What is IT'? Some say it is coding and algorithms, others cloud and variations thereof, others chip in ...... and then the fight starts.
The answer, I feel, is that it depends on where you are looking from. This snippet from my IT career will illustrate this.
When working at IBM, I had cause to travel to Warwick scores of times, staying at the same chic high street hotel each time. As a result, I only knew Warwick from that narrow perspective and would be totally useless in advising an inquisitive visitor about Warwick. This in spite of the fact that the hotel was across the road from Warwick castle, into which I never ventured and was thus a useless source of information on what is a major Warwick attraction.
In short, I was a specialist in getting to and from Warwick and staying in a high street hotel and little else. To get a real understanding of Warwick, I would have needed to absorb knowledge from various viewpoints: traversing the high street and noting places on it, looked at a view from the air, studied a map of the town, read a tour guide, walked down side roads and alleys and so on.
This is the type of work a would-be London taxi driver needs to do to acquire ‘the knowledge’, knowledge of London tested by an examiner before that person can become a registered black cab driver. It can take years to acquire.
This analogy I hope shows, once more, the need for a broad, underpinning of the fll IT environment - hard work I know - to progress, as opposed to merely surviving in IT.
Wisdom in IT
The Ten Commandments of IT
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Thou shalt not put technology before requirements
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Thou shalt manage thy IT resources wisely and squander them not
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Thou shalt not be moved by the siren sounds of vendors or geeks who seek to ensnare thee and move thee from the paths of righteousness to vapourware
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Thou shalt learn the disciplines of righteousness
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Thou shalt tend thy customer flock and lead them into the pastures of eternal secure, performant uptime, even in the cloud
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Thou shalt love thy customers as thyself for IT's sake
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Thou shalt not pulleth any wool over thy customer's eyes to hide thy SLA sins
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Thou shalt deliver documentation at all times according to the IT scriptures
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Thou shalt constantly instruct thy IT flock in the ways of true computing
10. Thou shalt love IT for its own sake and forsaketh it not for the the lures of
non-IT mammon.
If thou obeyeth these commandments, thou wilt truly deserve the accolade of ‘Master of Information Technology’.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON.
'Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone'.
Nine Myths About IT
Everybody has their own idea of what IT is and many also have mistaken ideas about it too.
The article in the link below lists nine myths about IT (there could be more). The main characteristic of a myth that it is a sincerely held belief about something which is not true. One such belief is that mainframes went the same way as the dinosaurs. Another is that you need a computing degree to enter the world of IT.
If you can see through these myths, your chances of succeeding in IT are greatly enhanced; believing them can be dangerous.
Upskilling the Workforce
There is an awful lot of talk about 'digital skills and literacy' but very little about precisely who in the population needs which IT skills and why.
The link below attempts to do this.
High Performance Computing (HPC)
Another of IT's Neglected Topics
High performance computing is a computing technology aimed at extremely fast computing, not deemed necessary for standard commercial work like invoicing or stock control. Such machines are considered overkill for this type of commercial work but necessary for work which might last a long time, with possible detrimental impact on ‘business.’
The main difference between commercial and HPC is that the latter use parallel processing.
An example is pharmaceutical molecular modelling (MM), where it takes years to develop and test a new drug and any delay can cost millions of dollars in lost revenue per day. If running of the MM takes several hours or days, the timescale for the drug’s debut will be extended.
Supercomputers or computer clusters to solve other complex problems requiring massive computation, such as the analysis of large datasets (for AI or ML), genomics, some financial work and large matrix manipulations common in many scientific applications.
This very important computing subject is notably absent from most computing curricula. It is disingenuous to deny student knowledge of a possible career, so why do some courses do it?
IT Funny Quotations
We all know that computers are wonderfully consistent and reliable but some people have other views of this beast.
The link below gives another perspective of computers and their uses.
IT Life of Fun
This link represet some of the amusing situations that the author and his colleagues experienced during life in the IT trenches.
The link below gives another perspective of life in Infornation Technology.