This has to be one of the most common questions asked of anyone in life. Apart from, How are you?, Can I buy you a drink? or cringingly, Do you come here often?. Well, this isn't an article about chat up lines or dating gotchas. I am long past all of that.
However, many people can simply reply “I am a plumber” or “Nah, I’m a sparky geezer!” (Electrician), or perhaps they might say "I have my own business selling cars" or "I work for a bank doing banking stuff". The point here is that no matter what they do, their audience will immediately be able to understand what they do and if they need their help or services, they can simply ask.
For the average IT geek, this is always a tricky and preferably avoidable question. We tend to shy away from disclosing our job because we are concerned about the impact of this little snippet of knowledge in the heads of a non IT savvy person.
There is a common phrase in IT that goes something like, 'A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing'. Actually, I guess this is true, in general. DIY being a good example.
As IT professionals we tend to try and answer this question ambiguously.
Mainly because we think that what we do is so very specialist and complicated, we also make allowances for the questioner as we believe that they will switch off. We have a primeval fear that we will not be able to complete communicating the fluffy, pinky greeny codey stuff, about why we love our job.
On this note, I do appreciate that in all professions there are general conversations and then there are the technical jargon and insider acronym riddled low level conversations.
As IT professionals we have invented more TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) than any other profession, possibly with the exception of airport abbreviation naming committees.
Anyhow, a typical answer would be “Urrrrm, Computers”.
“Arghh, Right!!!” comes the reply, quickly followed by “Can you take a look at my computer?”.
And this is it, the single biggest fear of an IT professional. Your job might be that of a patterns and framework designer for J2EE or you may be a Mainframe performance specialist, but rest assured the simple mention that you work with “Computers” means that you are now their personal technical support helpdesk, for life........
Now, by contrast, our plumber and electrician are both in the home building or renovation trades, but, you never hear me asking them if they can do some plasterboard stopping, tile my roof or fit double glazing.
I guess that over time the general levels of understanding of the different roles within IT will improve. However, until this day has arrived I have learnt the hard way to always reply in a precise and exact manner.
"I specialise in software application modernisation, building and shaping high productivity development teams to meet the demands of developing enterprise business applications. I also provide bespoke consulting and training services and expertise in utilising multi-platform 4GL code generation tools.”
Now, for all but the most technical people out there, I tend to get that ‘lights out’ glare about halfway through that sentence, but, on the plus side, I also no longer get those requests for on the spot computer repairs.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
However, many people can simply reply “I am a plumber” or “Nah, I’m a sparky geezer!” (Electrician), or perhaps they might say "I have my own business selling cars" or "I work for a bank doing banking stuff". The point here is that no matter what they do, their audience will immediately be able to understand what they do and if they need their help or services, they can simply ask.
For the average IT geek, this is always a tricky and preferably avoidable question. We tend to shy away from disclosing our job because we are concerned about the impact of this little snippet of knowledge in the heads of a non IT savvy person.
There is a common phrase in IT that goes something like, 'A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing'. Actually, I guess this is true, in general. DIY being a good example.
As IT professionals we tend to try and answer this question ambiguously.
Mainly because we think that what we do is so very specialist and complicated, we also make allowances for the questioner as we believe that they will switch off. We have a primeval fear that we will not be able to complete communicating the fluffy, pinky greeny codey stuff, about why we love our job.
On this note, I do appreciate that in all professions there are general conversations and then there are the technical jargon and insider acronym riddled low level conversations.
As IT professionals we have invented more TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) than any other profession, possibly with the exception of airport abbreviation naming committees.
Anyhow, a typical answer would be “Urrrrm, Computers”.
“Arghh, Right!!!” comes the reply, quickly followed by “Can you take a look at my computer?”.
And this is it, the single biggest fear of an IT professional. Your job might be that of a patterns and framework designer for J2EE or you may be a Mainframe performance specialist, but rest assured the simple mention that you work with “Computers” means that you are now their personal technical support helpdesk, for life........
Now, by contrast, our plumber and electrician are both in the home building or renovation trades, but, you never hear me asking them if they can do some plasterboard stopping, tile my roof or fit double glazing.
I guess that over time the general levels of understanding of the different roles within IT will improve. However, until this day has arrived I have learnt the hard way to always reply in a precise and exact manner.
"I specialise in software application modernisation, building and shaping high productivity development teams to meet the demands of developing enterprise business applications. I also provide bespoke consulting and training services and expertise in utilising multi-platform 4GL code generation tools.”
Now, for all but the most technical people out there, I tend to get that ‘lights out’ glare about halfway through that sentence, but, on the plus side, I also no longer get those requests for on the spot computer repairs.
Thanks for reading.
Lee.
Lee,
ReplyDeleteit is clear to me that you have no clue what EGL is or does and your assertion that "it is promising but immature because it has not evolved to the level of Plex/2e still requires, and that it only generates initial code that requires additoinal coding in the generated language.." is absolutely inaccurate.
I recommend that you do some research before publishing stuff like this, it does nothing but confirm your bias rather than provide useful insight to readers, and certainly erodes your credibility.
Dear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. I would have preferred to answer you by name. Next time please take the time to register as the blog is about creating debate.
To answer some of your concerns.
By maturity I am referring to the capability of the tool. I am aware of the Java and COBOL generation but it does leave the .NET community behind.
I stand by the point that the resultant code will require subsequent modifications as the EGL website states "EGL code generation automates the creation of repetitive and commonly needed application infrastructure coding with significant reduction of manually injected errors".
I am making the assumption that coding can therefore occur outside of the design model. What happens if the code is regenerated? Please point me to more resources.
As for my bias. Well you probably have me on that one. However, if you took the time to read the title of the blog you will notice that it is about 'Software Development Principles' with some coverage of Plex/2E.
Please send me the link to your EGL blog.
Many thanks.
Lee.
p.s. For others reading this please note that my original comments are on the blog related to 3GL and 4GL tools.