Edward J. Joyce

I had an epiphany the other day while looking at line 6257 of a 15,983-line UNIX shell script. That line was either author-encrypted (only decipherable by the programmer who wrote it) or the result of a cat walking on someone’s keyboard. Or maybe, just maybe, my programming skills were not up to the task. Although […]

Last spring one of my co-workers went to college campuses to recruit prospective “young mainframers.” Young mainframers? Isn’t that an oxymoron? My co-worker, Tim, explained that our company, a major software vendor, is seeing its mainframe workforce rapidly approaching the age of retirement. Tim said IBM and most other firms whose businesses depend on mainframes […]

In the early days of computers—sometime after the invention of the abacus but before you could buy a computer next to automotive supplies at K-Mart—the user interface was a simple flashing cursor. The cursor flashed, the computer was waiting for you. The cursor disappeared, the computer was computing. On what (or how long) the computer […]

If you’ve had to deal with a computer for more than a few nanoseconds, you’ve probably experienced the good, the bad and the ugly of technical support. Good support is that gem of technical trivia that hits the bull’s eye on the first shot—a precision-launched silver bullet that notches a perfect score and in slap-down […]