If you're looking to help make a difference in a company, developing existing and new software in Object Pascal (in addition to a host of other technologies),Object Pascal? What? I thought Pascal had joined Etruscan and RPG II in the dead languages category, and now an employer is looking for people with Object Pascal experience? Are they going to be waiting for a while?
Conservative. Idaho. Software engineer. Historian. Trying to prevent Idiocracy from becoming a documentary.
Email complaints/requests about copyright infringement to clayton @ claytoncramer.com. Reminder: the last copyright troll that bothered me went bankrupt.
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Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Fishing In A Very Small Pond
I see some interesting job ads. There's not any point in applying for them because of my age, but they are sometimes amusing to read, like this ad that appeared on Boise Craig's List:
Pascal's bad enough (hadn't seen it myself since the '80's) but "Object Pascal" ?
ReplyDeleteThat ... that just makes me itch.
Object Pascal, I'm not sure what it is, although I expect it's somewhat like Delphi, and Delphi is an evolution of Borland's Turbo Pascal and still pretty popular in the Windows world, because it's easier to write in than C.
ReplyDelete*Raises hand* I did Object Pascal for a company that made printing software for large image-setters.
ReplyDeleteObject Pascal was a language and library very similar to Delphi, in fact, we wrote for both OSes, although the market was primarily Mac. I think the management, which started as a PC company, chose it because in theory, if they learned this library they wouldn't have to actually learn the Mac or hire Mac programmers. Not entirely wise in the Publishing industry.
After I was hired, along with a couple of other Mac guys, the whole thing got a lot better. The Object Pascal libraries had been horribly misused, the Mac Resource forks were a mess (and made worse by a localization expert who was seemingly computer illiterate). I even got a chance to fork the build for a while to prove my point about improving the efficiency of the user interface, and when I was done, it literally brought tears to the eyes of the Tech Support lead.
For my trouble, a mew manager was brought in who hired another programmer who was apparently a personal friend and a crap programmer, most of the rest of the programmers were fired, and the company sold to their biggest client, Creo, much to the profit of those with Preferred shares (like this new manager) and a loss to those of us with regular shares.
Would I go back to it? Hell no. I'd rather build airplanes.
This would make sense for a company stuck with maintaining a legacy system. But new software? They're nuts. It pays to go with languages with a modern, robust ecosystem.
ReplyDelete