Relearning

I was once working on a team to select a new mainframe for the local electric utility. I represented the engineers. The other members of the team were rigidly in favour of sticking with the existing IBM (International Business Machines) line. I asked why when it had proved clear the competition was so much simpler to use and program. One guy representing the systems people answered, I have a decade’s worth of esoteric knowledge about how to coddle the mainframe and keep it going. If we switched vendors, that knowledge would be useless. I would have to start off afresh on an equal footing with everyone else.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)