From: Mail@JoesLife.org   
      
   On Sat, 15 Jul 2023 12:07:04 -0000 (UTC), Lew Pitcher wrote:   
      
   > Mostly, I designed, wrote, and maintained banking application software   
   > for a large Canadian bank, but in part of my career, I also wrote and   
   > maintained system-level code for some of the bank's smaller mainframes.   
   >   
   > I worked primarily in S390 Assembler and COBOL, and was expected to have   
   > a working knowledge of any of the other languages that the bank used at   
   > the time.   
   >   
   > In the middle years of my career, I installed Slackware on a spare   
   > system, and used it for a number of pilot projects, including a   
   > mainframe "print to email" test solution, a bridge between a Novell   
   > Netware network and a TCP/IP network (part of a WfH support task),   
   > and an ODBC-based database query support for one of our internal   
   > applications.   
      
   Thank you so much for sharing about your career! I can tell that put your   
   heart into it.  It is interesting that you wrote Assembler.  And it is   
   neat that you found applications for Slackware.   
      
   > I'm sure that the programming path would have had as many challenges and   
   > rewards as the path you took. For the most part, we "work" in the fields   
   > that we enjoy working in.   
      
   That sounds like a good philosophy and probably true, although--lacking   
   the ability to do it over again and compare--it will remain a puzzle.  I   
   try to live well, and I am thankful for the many opportunities I still   
   find to program.  I get great satisfaction from writing code (mostly   
   bash).  Perhaps it even does me some good, as I have written many useful   
   tools.   
      
   > Luck be with you, Joe   
      
   And also with you.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)