Tony Duell wrote:
> > I could read this statement as an incredibly arrogant one. The implication
>
> That was not my intention.
Fair enough :-)
[snip]
> This may vary in different countries, but certainly in the UK,
> engineers/physicists/mathematical programmers/electronics designers, etc
> are not, in general, well paid. There are exceptions, of course, but I
> would think that people who were the most clueful at repairing old
> computers would often have a lower salary than some other groups of
> people.
You're absolutly right; I forgot that my corner of the world isn't
the *only* corner of the world, and I'll be the first to admit that
in my little corner salaries are utterly whacked in comparison with
skill sets -- but not universally so.
In my case I've on collecting those machines that I worked
with growing up (although the PR1MEs are an exception to that rule).
As a consequence of the things that I learned working with those
machines I have a comparatively successful career which allows me
the luxury of throwing money at my hobby -- although that usual
translates as paying somebody a chunk of change to haul something
hundreds or thousands of miles as opposed to actually purchasing
the stuff.
[snip]
> Well, certainly over here, being good at electronics/engineering/etc is
> _not_ a way to get a well-paid job :-(
As I said, head space on my part. Over here being *good* isn't even a
requirement -- all you need is the ability to spell "engineer".
> > If in fact it truly requires specialized equipment and this hacker
>
> One of the first things I learnt when I started collecting was to never
> believe the 'trained engineers only' warnings, and certainly not to
> believe something couldn't be repaired just because the manual said it
> couldn't ;-)
That was kinda my point, but my argument was flawed from a societal
standpoint. Someone with the mental horsepower not to be put off
by such silly warnings would generally have all sorts of options open
to them in the Valley.
> > can demonstrate that it doesn't, I'm at a loss to understand why said
> > hacker is unemployed save by choice.
>
> You are implying that there are jobs for people who can fix 1960's
> calculators with homemade special tools? Or who can make parts for 8"
> disk drives themselves?
Yes, but not repairing 60's calculators or fabricating parts for 8"
drives. My point is that someone who can perform the level of analysis
and engineering required to do these things is a *real* engineer, as
opposed to the people who are because they've got a piece of paper that
says so.
> Where???
At any given time there's usually between 17K and 22K unfilled engineering
positions in the valley. Even factoring out all the support and grunt
positions my guess is that there are more than just a few staff engineering
(or above) positions that could benefit from the skills we're talking about
here.
[snip]
> Nobody is saying that _everyone_ has to understand this. Just that some
> people should be aware that it once existed, and could possibly be useful
> again.
No argument there. Far too many things get re-invented because
people have no knowlege of prior art -- but it could be argued that
we're describing the need for senior staff positions (which are
*very* hard to find -- everyone wants you to be a VP instead) and
better education. The latter in particular; maybe it's just me,
but it seems like most newly minted master's I see these days
are barely qualified to operate the coffee maker.
[snip]
> > Will this knowledge vanish if all us hobby types fell off the planet? No,
> > unless we've started burning books again and I didn't get the memo.
>
> A lot of things are _not_ documented in books. There is a big difference
> (IMHO) between the idealised CPUs that you find in text books and actual,
> real world ones. And those differences are the interesting part IMHO.
> Anyone can design a CPU, but can you define an 'efficient' one (where
> efficiency can mean a lot of different things).
I certainly agree with the latter -- the ability to do effective design
isn't found in a book, but rather in experience. Nothing scares me more
than walking into a CPU lab and finding a copy of one of Patterson's books
on every engineer's desk as if it were a bible.
Chris
--
Chris Kennedy
chris_at_mainecoon.com
http://www.mainecoon.com
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
Received on Tue Jun 27 2000 - 19:46:09 BST