Posts by J.G.Harston 3725 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2009
Reminds me of a friend's bollocking.
He was working in outgoing mail. You can get bulk mail discounts if you supply your mail to the Royal Mail in postcode batches. They were printing out the week's mail and then sorting it by hand into post trays for forwarding to RM. He noticed he could set 'print sorted by postcode', bingo, three days' work done in 30 minutes.
YOU FOOL!!!!! That's three days' work we can't bill for!!!!!
None of what you have described is IT.
My current job title is IT Field Engineer. *I* *AM* *NOT* *AN* *ENGINEER*. There is *NOTHING* in my job that is engineering, I'm a fitter. I know what engineering is, I do it as a *hobby*. Nobody pays me to code, people pay me to unpack PCs, install default installations on them, and put them on people's desks, put the PCs in the correct user group, create users, reset passwords. That. Is. Not. Engineering. It is this century's Office Admin. Sorry to hurt anybody's feelings, but it is. It is 1970s filling the photocopier, it is 1930s changing the typewriter ribbons, it is 1850s filling the ink wells.
Let me repeat.
IT is driving a car. It is *NOT* automotive engineering. If you're doing the computer equivalent of automotive engineering, *IT'S* *NOT* *IT*.
Stop mixing the two up.
"What I do find unfortunately is a tendency for new starters to want to go straight in to an IT specialism (such as Cyber Security), without having done the hard miles first on the likes of an IT support desk, or infrastructure teams."
So...... you must do stuff you have no skills and competence in before being allowed to do what you do have skills and competence in.
I've been a field engineer for over a decade. I'm crap at help desk. I've only ever done two weeks at help desk, I was hopeless. You're insisting that people who are skilled at X be barred from doing X because they are crap at Y.
There needs to be an understanding that there a difference between:
* I need some staff who can write me a 64-bit multiplication routine, I only have 8-bit multiplies available; but an optimised non-MUL would be ok.
and:
* The entire world revolves around being able to read and write, and in today's world one reads and writes with electronic devices.
Plus, if you're innate skills, aptitude and enthusiasm is hardware/software engineering and "fiddling about" building things with Pis and Arduinos, WFT are you going to apply for a job as a helpdesk monkey? "I love stripping down and rebuilding motorbikes, I know, I'll become a filling station attendant, because it's working with motor vehicles!"
It's like telling an aspiring teaching that it's fine they're cleaning toilets, you're cleaning toilets *in* *a* *school*!
"...I live in Canada, which is not renowned for high IT salaries .... my cousin's husband ... job as a Senior Software Developer"
That's not IT. That's programming.
I apologise if I'm hurting people's feelings, but "IT" is "Office Admin", Software Development is ***NOT*** "IT".
It actively HURTS the way people don't - or can't - understand what they're discussing.
"plus there are many sites that offer free introductory courses for HTML, CSS, VBA and more."
None of which is programming, that's document markup. "I've selected some text and clicked BOLD, Hey! I'm programming!"
It's easy to learn automotive engineering, there's a driving school in every town.
Again there's the confusion and conflation between "IT", "digital skill", "programming". What's "digital skills"? Being able to type? Well, yes I'd worry if today's skills were not producing kids who could manage what is functionally this century's "literacy".
"ICT GCSE ... focused office skills rather than those most useful for a job in tech, such as programming."
Well, DUH! IT/ICT ****IS***** Office Skills. It's "how to type", today's version of "how to use a pencil". Half this article is complaining there aren't enough people who can type, half is complaining there aren't enough people who can code. Make. Your. *****. Mind. Up.
Are they complaining that schools aren't producing enough programmers? WTH are they expecting mass production of programmers from schools? As an earlier poster pointed out, the skill and aptitude for programming is something you *have* not something that is imparted by schools. Yes, it's something schools can do to kill off, but if you're not a person who is innately a programmer, it's not something a school can change. This is complaining that not enough people know how to drive, the economy is going to depend on automotive manufacture, why aren't schools producing enough automotive engineers?
If you have a manageable finite set of values, iterating over all of them can be the most appropriate test. On the same subject, just recently I was testing a 32-bit integer divide routine built from 16-bit operations, and I just built a bit of code to test all 2^32 x 2^32 cases and left it running overnight. At least this was with 2020s CPU speed. ;)
Edibility is a flaw. Many many years ago I was buying some Jelly Babies in a store where you measure them yourself into the scales. I got to something like 105g, so picked one up to put back to get to 100g, and automatically popped it in my mouth.
Do'h!
So I picked another one to put back, and automatically popped it in my mouth.
DOH!
It took a strong effort of will to remove a jelly baby from the scales and put it back in the hopper.
I'm probably a similar age to you, but from being knee-high to a cricket, the word 'hack' and 'hacker' were defined as someone who used a *badly* thought out cheat to *bodge* something together. If it was well thought out and achieved engineering goodness, it was - by definition - *not* a hack or hacking.
Viz:
Hack a bit off this timber. Saw a bit off this timber.
Hack your way through the undergrowth. Clear your way through the undergrowth.
Ever since I heard it four decades ago, "hacker" has always sounded to me to be somebody to "hacks" away at something instead of thinking through, planning, and structuring something. I don't want software that's been "hacked" together, I want it to be written properly. So, "hacker" to me means more like "unprofessional" than "without permission".
How *DARE* the NHS buy IT services from other people. Capitalist profit-making running dogs! The NHS should branch out into IT services.
And food production. How *DARE* they buy food from private companies.
And electricity generation. How *DARE* they buy food from private companies
And water collection, cleansing and distribution. How *DARE* they buy water from private companies.
That's 'cos DC ain't a state, and federal elections are for positions in the federation, and the federation is a federation of states, you've gotta be a state to be a member of the federation. Just like Isle of Man doesn't vote for representatives in the UK parliament because it's not a constituent of the UK, and Norway don't vote for representatives in the EU 'cos Norway ain't a member of the EU.
If you wanna vote in the club, you gotta be in the club.
Remotely fixing a user's system. User on phone "I just need to pop out for a hour". That's ok, I don't need you.
tapitty tapitty tappitty. Hmmm.... network issues... tapitty tapitty... that hasn't worked.... tappitty.... I'll just refresh the IP address...... ARRFGFGFG!!!! UGGBER!
There's some severe bending of the language going on there. If you work, you're a worker, it's irrelevant if you're a self-employed worker, a contracted worker, an employed worker, an unemployed worker, you're a worker. '"worker" and "type of employment" are separate axes. How did such illiteracy get baked into law?
Ditto, and I even do that when paying a fiver to my window cleaner. I'm slightly paranoid about paying money into the wrong bank account after 30 years ago finding my bank had inadvertantly given my bank account number to another customer by giving them the wrong sort code, so we were both receiving and spending money from the same account.
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