andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2002-12-12 10:30 pm
andrewducker) wrote2002-12-12 10:30 pm
Presentation madness
My 7 weeks of introductory training comes to an end tomorrow. The usual method of ending this is to have a presentation that all of our future managers come to. We had lots of fun and games getting them sorted, including an early dearth of ideas for how to actually make the topic "Thinking about Programming: an examination of the thought processes involved in programming" less than completely boring.
Luckily we came up with the theme of "Christmas" (inspired, eh?), and I took the part of Scrooge, visiting by the spirits of Christmas Planning, Christmas Coding and Christmas Testing, who helped me get my project sorted out so that I could live happily ever after. This was all well and good, but what actually made the whole afternoon was the song.
Yes, you heard aright, we sang.
In fact, we sang "The 12 days of training", which was simple enough - just take a stage of the training course, give it an amusing twist and fit it into "The 12 Days Of Christmas". Except that we then complicated it further so that when we sang it together it formed (in parts) coherent sentences, like so:
On the third day of Training, Trevor said to us "Here's Net Express, Use a design, To make COBOL really easy."
while on the next verse was:
.
On the fourth day of Training, Trevor said to us "Here's how to code, With Net Express, And a design, To make COBOL really easy"
Obviously, what with changing stuff like this (and other changes too), plus people singing "Christmas" rather than "Training" it was slightly shambolic, but we pulled it together and impressed people enough that we got about a 45 second ovation, which was marvellous. Apparently they haven't had people do a song before (in 8 years of running the course), so that was nice too.
Anyway, they were all impressed, we came out of it looking good (especially when we presented Trevor with some whisky as a thank you) and my worries were (as usual) completely unfounded.
Now, one more day of "Initial Training" left, then two days of JCL training next week, then three days in my team, off for 2 weeks holiday then into work proper.
And then I get to find out what it's actually like to work for Standard Life, a mere 9 months or so after I originally applied!
Luckily we came up with the theme of "Christmas" (inspired, eh?), and I took the part of Scrooge, visiting by the spirits of Christmas Planning, Christmas Coding and Christmas Testing, who helped me get my project sorted out so that I could live happily ever after. This was all well and good, but what actually made the whole afternoon was the song.
Yes, you heard aright, we sang.
In fact, we sang "The 12 days of training", which was simple enough - just take a stage of the training course, give it an amusing twist and fit it into "The 12 Days Of Christmas". Except that we then complicated it further so that when we sang it together it formed (in parts) coherent sentences, like so:
On the third day of Training, Trevor said to us "Here's Net Express, Use a design, To make COBOL really easy."
while on the next verse was:
.
On the fourth day of Training, Trevor said to us "Here's how to code, With Net Express, And a design, To make COBOL really easy"
Obviously, what with changing stuff like this (and other changes too), plus people singing "Christmas" rather than "Training" it was slightly shambolic, but we pulled it together and impressed people enough that we got about a 45 second ovation, which was marvellous. Apparently they haven't had people do a song before (in 8 years of running the course), so that was nice too.
Anyway, they were all impressed, we came out of it looking good (especially when we presented Trevor with some whisky as a thank you) and my worries were (as usual) completely unfounded.
Now, one more day of "Initial Training" left, then two days of JCL training next week, then three days in my team, off for 2 weeks holiday then into work proper.
And then I get to find out what it's actually like to work for Standard Life, a mere 9 months or so after I originally applied!
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< me thinks > forever known as the singing software developer < /me thinks >
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(Anonymous) 2002-12-13 05:43 am (UTC)(link)JCL is fun, though - I recall my shock that there still existed computer operating systems where you had to do your own very low level file allocation. It's oK though, mostly you copy other people's and change a few bits.
What's your database - ABADAS? Natural is the query language. I can't recall enough of that now to tell you how different it is from SQL.
I do find it somewhat hilarious that you are now going to be doing pretty much what I was doing so long ago - Is this your way of trying to pretend you are still 22 :-) ?
ex-Cobol programmer
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Oh, and Expediter (the animater/trace program) is a bit of a nightmare.
JCL is dead easy so far - we got a day on it, which gave us pretty much everything we need to know.