Ws32ok

I was referring to https://postmeritocracy.org/

As per the comment to which I was replying.

Just one example from that manifesto: “We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.”

This a terrible slippery slope. It eliminates any military, security or even anything useful.

A thief’s well-being is meant to be negatively impacted by a security measure. A guidance system in a missile is intended to negatively impact the well-being of the enemy.

I feel negatively impacted by this manifesto. So by definition every signatory is in violation of that manifesto.

Let’s face it, if you can’t make a pong app for your platform in a few hours then you’re probably not an app developer. If you can’t point at a portfolio of work and/or customers then building a work sample isn’t unheard of.

That said, you will own the finished product (right?!) so add it to your portfolio when finished, eg post screenshots etc on your website.

Be cool about it though, make sure you’re enthusiastic and mention you will be posting the project on github or whatever (if that’s what you do). If they demand they own it then that’s a red flag.

Remember you are also hiring THEM as much as they are hiring you.

Useful links for the idly curious like me. More welcome.

Rent cloud access http://www.timeshare400.com/

Hercules http://www.hercules-390.org/

Debian s390x is linux that seems to be supported.

Fine. I want to learn how to maintain/write software for a mainframe.

How do I start? Can I get access to one? Can I build up something I can learn on? What is the best path for doing this? How would I usefully gain enough experience to get into this?

I have linux, python, c, but unsurprisingly can’t afford 30 million (or whatever) on a mainframe.

I know about Hercules, but I’d only be able to run Linux. Is that right? Is that useful?

My feeling is that I’d need experience to get a job, but I can’t get experience without a job. Seems like the whole shortage is a lie. If there was a shortage I’d be able to find various organisations falling over themselves to help me into mainframes.

I’m happy with this. The trauma from events that happened decades before my birth still haunt me.

Still, we have a long way to go. Linux and Mac are full of triggering words and concepts which need to be made acceptable.

If only Unix didn’t have a kill command. Then I’d finally not be triggered each time I had to end a process. The killing of child processes is still quite traumatic.

The man command. Sexist. Mansplaining at its worst.

As for the finger command. I’m not sure what to say.

I too develop software using this mythical language known as C.

I haven’t seen any unicorns yet but I do seem to have found a quantity of gold. But no rainbow.

The penny dropped for me about 5 years ago. I cleared my account out. Didn’t bother deleting the account though.