Labyrinthine
I’m gonna bend your ear AGAIN about modernizing “legacy” computer applications. Trump’s pick for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Sean Duffy, seems to think he can modernize the FAA in FOUR YEARS!
NOPE! 😵💫🤪🤣You are not going to do that. Not without planes falling outta the sky. You are still using floppy disks.
I have said this umpteen bazillion times before but I have spent the last 18 years of my life working on an online banking development team. Most of my time at this company has been focused on building out our web application to handle what the old “legacy” system did. Green screen and mainframe emulators. Guess what? We are there now. Sometimes there is some tweaking but that’s easy. Usually. The thing is, errors in on-line banking applications can create all kinds of chaos and havoc. But they usually don’t make planes fall outta the sky or crash into helicopters.
Yes, the FAA systems ABSOLUTELY need to be modernized. Floppy disks? I actually managed to get the GG to get rid of OUR old floppy disks a few years ago. But we need careful planning by people who know what the hell they are doing. Anyone who says this transition can happen in four years does NOT know what they are doing.
Today, I spent a lot of my time untangling one of the most byzantine javascript files ever. I finally had to hit the nuclear option. That means I deleted everything except the stuff that WORKED. I learned this back when I self-taught myself FORTRAN back in my childhood career at That Darn EPA. Today, I was carefully putting things back a bitsy bit at a time with lots of testing when a few other folks usurped me for other stuff so… It’s okay. These are the fun work days.
May 9th, 2025 at 8:21 am
Isn’t it great to have a job you actually like? All 42 years of my working career, post-college working career, were devoted to work I loved and that challenged me. Doesn’t mean I didn’t complain or feel stress or anxiety. Doesn’t mean I didn’t work late or at home at times to get a job done in time. But having satisfaction in your job is a great gift that not all people are fortunate enough to receive.
May 9th, 2025 at 11:48 am
I loved teaching but I got tired of the constant stress over numbers and of getting up at 5 am. Now I’m usually awake by 7 but can get up whenever I want, usually by 8.