Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 02/10/2024 18:29, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

Yes, the problem with many companies is that the don't keep their
sales staff on a tight enough leash.  I remember this scenario,
which happened all too often:
      Salesman: Celebration, everyone!  I just sold the ABC account!
                 All we have to do is give them X, Y, Z...
     Techies:  You WHAT?!
 I came to the sad realization that my job was to keep salesmen's
promises for them.  I left that outfit the second time we wound up
eating a man-year doing this - and it was the same salesman both times.

The best thing about my company was that I was one of the bosses, and I insisted that salesmen run their specs past me before promising anything. or in extremis drag me out of my hobbit hole, put on a suit and talk to the customer myself
--
“it should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism (or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans, about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a 'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,' a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian utopia of 1984.”
Vaclav Klaus