Letters

Regarding Al Stevens' February 2000 "C Programming" column: In addition to Al's S language, there's another one that has been going strong for 20+ years at Bell Labs and elsewhere; see http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ ms/departments/sia/S/index.html and http:// www.bell-labs.com/news/1999/april/ 7/1.html. The "other" (not Al's) S received the 1999 ACM Software System Award.

Frederick Kautz

Frederick.Kautz@db.com

IP Security

Dear DDJ,

The article "IP Security Protocols," by Eva Bozoki (December, 1999) was very informative and quite timely for us. We're preparing a release of our product, Ovrimos SQL Server featuring SSL. What we found out regarding interoperability of SSL products, is that both Navigator and Explorer do not implement Diffie-Hellman key exchange, effectively turning SSL into something locked to RSA. I think this should be known to fellow developers who need to interoperate with these browsers, since the RSA patent has not yet expired, and the fee to use the algorithm inside the U.S. is considerable for small budgets.

Dimitrios Souflis

dsouflis@altera.gr

Pnuts Pointer

Dear DDJ,

According to the January 2000 article "Scripting for Pnuts," by John McCoy, I can download the pnuts scripting environment from http://www.etale.com/pnuts/, but I can't even hit the home page. Could you please tell me where I can down load Pnuts? It would come in very handy at this time.

Robert Carbonari

robertC@opmr.com

DDJ responds: Robert, thanks for your note and sorry for the inconvenience. You can get a copy of Pnuts 1.0beta5 at http://javacenter .sun.co.jp/pnuts/. This includes source code.

Flyby

Dear DDJ,

Regarding Jonathan Erickson's January 2000 editorial ("It's Better To Be Rich And Famous, Than To Live Near An Airport"): When the Federal Government gives money to the airports, it stipulates many constraints and rules on how the airport operates. Because of the manpower issues at the FAA, and the fact the agency doesn't want to get into an unpopular fight, many times the FAA does not enforce the rules. Therefore it is up to the person who is affected by the rules not being enforced to make the city abide by the rules they agreed to when they accepted the money. The City of San Jose has two choices for the future: Not accept the federal money, or lobby Congress to change the rules.

Al Gettier

gettier@ieee.org

Dear DDJ,

As a pilot and a software developer, I must take issue with Jonathan Erickon's January 2000 editorial "It's Better To Be Rich And Famous, Than To Live Near An Airport." While the local community certainly has the legal right to limit the hours of use on their airport, it doesn't have the moral right. I certainly don't support Larry Ellison's actions in landing after the curfew, but the city was wrong to put the curfew in effect to begin with.

Nearly all airports are started in rural areas. People then decide that it would be nice to live near the jobs that the airport brings to the community, and so they move in just off the ends of the runway. A few years go by, and soon they complain about the noise, and start slapping curfews or noise-abatement regulations on the pilots who operate there. This is patently unfair -- we didn't build our airport in their backyards, they moved in next door! I'm sorry, but if aircraft noise bothers you, don't move next door to an airport.

Tina Femea

(private pilot, aircraft owner, and software developer)

tina@aftershock.neosoft.com

Worker Shortage?

Dear DDJ,

Regarding Jonathan Erickson's February 2000 editorial entitled "Work Shortage A Tall Tale?", you can't talk about a programmer shortage without determining whether or not programmers are going into management. There is a longstanding tradition in engineering whereby most engineers are eventually translated into the management of nonengineering activities. In effect, the engineering corps forms the prime source of management for the whole company. It would be interesting to know whether something similar is happening with computer programming. The article "Tomorrow's Management Generation" in Datamation, September 15, 1987, dealt with a group of computer programmers, some of whom were negotiating the transition.

You should be aware that alarms about programming unemployment are periodically sounded, and at least so far, they have not been borne out. In Programmers and Managers: The Routinization of Computer Programming in the United States (Springer-Verlag, 1977), Phillip Kraft was prophesying the end of programming in 1977, when there were about half a million programmers. There are now about 2 million.

Andrew D. Todd

u46a8@wvnvm.wvnet.edu

Dear DDJ,

I'm a 46 year-old electrical engineer who built his first computer when I was 16. I have extensive experience in Fortran, Assembler, C, C++, SQL, Sybase, and Oracle. I spent two years trying to find a job in this economy that is "begging" for IT professionals. During the two years that I was looking for a job, my company was systematically replacing the programmers with Chinese nationals who were willing to work for $20,000 below the going rate for a chance to stay in this country. While I support a free market, I think that many companies are becoming the "sweatshops" of the 21st century by taking advantage of the political conditions in these countries. Jonathan Erickson's February 2000 editorial ("Worker Shortage A Tall Tale?") was right on the mark, and I say thank you for pointing this out.

Name Withheld by Request

Dear DDJ,

I have been working as an electrical engineer in computer hardware, software, and related fields for some 30 years. Jonathan Erickson's February 2000 editorial ("Worker Shortage A Tall Tale?") about the supposed worker shortage was very amusing to me. I can recall for each of the last 30 years that the IEEE has predicted a "shortage" of electrical engineers and software engineers every year. If all of these "shortages" were added together, EEs and software people would be getting the $200/hour that I heard reported about people fixing Y2K problems (but could never actually find such a job or a person working such a job). I think your editorial was right on, just "follow the money!".

Alan Horn

ajhorn@ajhorn.com

Dear DDJ,

I agree with Jonathan Erickson in his February 2000 editorial ("Worker Shortage A Tall Tale?") in that companies are biased against older, experienced employees, and are using the H-1B program as a cheap labor force.

I formerly worked at a company which would hire H-1B people, then send them to training for the specific skills which the company needed. This contradicts the original premise that they were hired for special skills not found within the nonH-1B labor force. This same company also modified its vacation policy so that it was biased against employees with 15 or more years experience. The specifics are: The company originally had a "vacation pre-accrual formula" (you earn vacation days this year for use next year). This policy was changed where now it became a "post-accrual formula" (earning vacation days in the current year for the current year). The result: If you add already accrued vacation for next year, then the policy changed, then next year you had to re-earn the same vacation days in that year. Why wasn't the entire company up in arms about it? If you had less than 15 years with the company, then the number of vacation weeks had been increased. I questioned HR, my manager, and several officers of the company about this, and they either pointed the finger at someone else, or denied responsibility. Oddly enough, with the "short-sighted cost-savings" technique the company is using, this is the second year in a row it did not make a profit. You may ask why wasn't legal action taken or why another avenue was investigated. Well, if I was to become branded as a "complainer" or worse, my prospects for employment drop significantly.

Name Withheld by Request

Dear DDJ

In reference to Jonathan Erickson's editorial "Worker Shortage a Tall Tale?" (February 2000): While it is true that there is a tendency to hire college grads as opposed to retraining older workers, there is a reason for this: Most organizations these days simply don't have the time to retrain older programmers in new technologies. Whether it is ethical or not, companies working on the Web in particular need people who can be productive now, not next month or next year. Taking on someone who needs extensive retraining just isn't an option outside of places such as Oracle and IBM. Unfortunately, programmers everywhere are going to have to realize that no employer is going to pay them to study -- it's something they are going to have to do on their own, constantly.

Brad Clawsie

bjc@yahoo.com

Design By Interface

Dear DDJ,

I read with great interest the article "Design By Interface," by Robb Shecter, in the the February 1999 issue of DDJ. In the sample Listing Two, a line was omitted in the "send" method of OROEmailAdapter which would actually send the body of the e-mail. The line

writer.write(content);

should be added between the lines:

writer.write(header.toString());

writer.close();

which originally sent the e-mail header, but then closed immediately without sending the message body. Thank you for this article, it was of great use.

Samuel Pearlman

sampearl@interdim.com

DDJ