Re: giving an iSeries system to each college

[Tom Liotta <qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Dow (ML) wrote:

> I used one of those timeshares for awhile, but none of them give you 
> that hands on experience, doing saves to a real tape drive, replacing 
> disk drives concurrently, installing the OS in the 1st place, upgrading 
> it, applying PTFs, etc.
> However, not having to pay for software support in order to stay on the 
> latest version with all the goodies is a definite plus.
I have a model 170 at home. Before it, I had a couple model 400s. 
After owning systems for 6 years, I've probably totalled some 12 
hours of "hands-on" experience (plus 3-4 hours of physical memory 
upgrades and DASD replacement).
Now, even though various upgrades, etc., added up to much more than 
12 hours of clock-time, the vast majority of it was taken up by 
waiting by doing something else. Every half-hour or whatever, I'd 
swap a CD and type <g> or whatever the character was.
My wife uses a PC much of the day, but she has zero practical 
"hands-on" experience. That is, if I told her to open the /download 
directory on her D: drive, she wouldn't have the faintest idea what 
to do.
I guess my point is that it really isn't that big a part of it all. 
The _concepts_ of how CL commands work and how IBM organizes menus 
and the importance of <F1> and <F4>, and all the little goodies such 
as joblogs and job descriptions, etc., etc., are far more important 
than how to do a restore from tape.
Besides, the smaller percentage who actually _need_ direct hands-on 
experience, well, they _can_ pick up pretty inexpensive boxes via 
eBay or wherever. Many can simply put some time in next to the 
hardware at work. Even if separation of duties interferes, being an 
observer can be possible.
I'm rambling in thought because I don't really know how important or 
meaningful "hands-on" is. The positions that I've held have almost 
always been unique within the departments; i.e., I would be the 
_only_ one writing startup programs or running upgrades, etc. No 
other developer particularly cared. That's a bit different in my 
current position, but this job isn't like any before either.
Tom Liotta