The achievements of Maurice Wilkes  and his generation (Presidents past and present) put the performance of the great and good of the BCS and the UK industry ever since in a harsh light.

Wilkes did things much more quickly than today’s academics. In 1946, he decided to build a computer as a tool for the Cambridge Maths Lab. By 1949 he had produced Edsac from scratch, with a bit of help from John van Neumann in the US. Some claim it was the first programmed computer in the world.
Edsac also spawned the first business computer in the world, Leo, in 1951.

Wilkes went from an idea in his head to a business application in only five years. Match that today.
The use was thought up by the baker Joe Lyons, not an IT guy. Three years later, Lyons decided to market Leo because none of the business machine companies, including IBM, had come up with a viable alternative. Leo came from the needs of a business user, not from the airy-fairy ideas of computer scientists.

There are plenty of messages in this heartening story for the BCS of today. Most of these messages contradict conventional wisdom.

One is about professionalism. The Leo people did not learn about computers at school or university, as computers did not exist at that time. Their knowledge came from the professions they were in before they joined Joe Lyons.

They were accountants, management trainees, production engineers who learned the techie bit as they went on.

Perhaps people should learn a profession first, and only then be let loose on computers. Maurice Wilkes and his contemporaries were giants ­ I sometimes wonder about their successors.

Richard Sarson

During the past few years the idea of designing your application or program before writing it has all but vanished. Script and program developers are not being taught fundamental design before coding; nor, it seems, are they receiving proper professional language training.

They are encouraged to be ‘hackers’, the outcome of which is shoddy, unstructured and erroneous code. As a trainer I was recently asked to provide course outlines for new entrants. When the proposal was put to the client, the conclusion was that the training was too expensive and that someone in the organisation could adequately teach what was needed. That person may be technically competent but is not a trainer and will surely pass on bad programming habits.

Cutting out good professional training for any employee is wrong. No wonder projects fail. Companies must reawaken to the fact that training is still very important in increasing an employee’s worth, and that cutting corners to save money is a recipe for disaster.

Malcolm Kayser

I have been reading with interest the letters regarding skills shortages in IT and the problems of  making a career in IT appealing to encourage new blood into the industry (letters.computing.co.uk).

There are very few industries where one minute you can be regarded as a highly-valued expert and the next all the skills and knowledge you have spent years acquiring are almost worthless.

In my 20 years in IT I have had to learn Cobol, Clipper, FoxPro, Visual FoxPro, Dos, Windows 3.x, Windows 9x, Windows XP, Windows NT and so on. I have just started to work with SQL Server 2005, and guess what? It is completely different to SQL Server 2000 so I need to learn it all over again.

I am getting so tired of this that I am seriously considering a career change. What makes it worse is that employers seem to be looking for people with Microsoft qualifications plus extensive experience, but are offering only about £25,000 a year.

Plumbing is looking a very attractive proposition to me at the moment.

Chris Ransom

Lewis Roberts says of CCTV: ‘Had anyone thought there would be 14 million of the things…’ (Identity crisis, letters.computing.co.uk). Someone did think of it, in 1948: his name was Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell.

It is interesting how many of his predictions in 1984 have come true in the 21st century under the leadership of his namesake, Tony. Ubiquitous video surveillance is just one example. One could also mention constant erosion of civil liberties on the pretext that we have to protect against subversion because we are ‘at war’ with terrorism, increasing intrusion into citizens’ private lives, manipulation and distortion of the news to suit government policy, rewriting of history, and removal of words from the language in an attempt to influence people’s behaviour.

Richard Parkins

The Dutch have been able to provide a model which works well to bridge university and industry skills gaps (Employers want IT graduates with business skills).

The Dutch have two options for taking a degree. The first is the traditional university pathway to Masters level. The second is a system called HBO which is taken over four years, of which one year must be in industry at an assessed placement.

The HBO colleges (known as Hogeschools) have had to make their courses relevant to industry and forge real links with local companies. Their students graduate with a year’s industrial experience and find jobs quicker than their university educated colleagues.

I was nowhere near as prepared as many HBO recruits I have seen. Both my universities had no real links with industry, further shown by the lack of any dedicated members of staff to find work placements.

Jonathan Eaton

When I open my wallet I find about 20 different credit, debit, and store loyalty cards, and my driving licence. A new ID card will make it even worse (ID card deals primed to start).

Should we not try to introduce one biometric, PIN-protected multi-card with the ability to add, remove and update all our virtual cards and accounts? Obviously it requires building additional infrastructure capable of handling such a solution, but  it’s the only possible future.

When we have our wallet stolen we have to cancel and remember all the details of our cards and quickly predict what impact it would have on our privacy. With a multi-card we would be able to call just one call centre and cancel our card, reducing potential risk.

Waldek Hiero

Phrases such as ‘not hiring IT graduates because they lack business acumen’ anger me (Employers want IT graduates with business skills). It is not the place of a computer science degree course to teach business.

Business is always keen to dump all the responsibility on universities while not investing in training itself.  There are plenty of skilled people out there who don’t have IT jobs, including myself. I have a degree plus years of experience.

The reason we don’t get jobs is because IT wants to save a buck by hiring graduates. If companies want
experience then they need to be prepared to pay for experience.

Jonathan Howell

The news that Tesco is going to deploy Web 2.0 technologies to provide customers with a sense of community is good news (Tesco chases online appeal).

We at ICT Gateshead have been deploying these technologies for a while. We create dynamic social network Web 2.0 sites to recreate the school community online.

Schools enjoy this technology as communications are increased with the people who want to interact with parents. Pupils also enjoy the ability to interact with each other. In the primary school setting we provide support for the curriculum using web blogs as a means to engage pupils in writing. We have been deploying podcast technology for a long time ­ our radio station had podcasts before the BBC.

In the ‘real world’, early adoption of technologies is very rare, this is why I am excited by the Tesco announcement as it is a move to legitimacy. What is currently new technology will soon be adopted and used by more and more people.

We as educators can at least say that we were there to support this take-up by making sure pupils were
given the skills to interact with the technology.

Mike Carter

It is time for local authorities and the public sector in general to raise its game in supporting shared services and new ways of working and, in particular, the concept of agility (Whitehall acts on shared IT).

Little in the way of service- oriented architecture (SOA) development has taken place in the public sector, which is still dominated by a cadre of silo solutions that fail even at the most basic level to support the characteristics of contemporary SOA and principles of service construction.

These characteristics and principles are not just nice-to-haves. They are needed to realise the shared services work that, if recent articles are to be believed, is well under way.

A closer look soon reveals that what is being undertaken is nothing more than the traditional handing over of a service as-is, without any real attempt to change its underlying structures or assumptions, or integrate its results.

It is good old-fashioned big government relying on centralisation of functions to realise economies of scale, rather than joined-up services to realise agile structures and economies of scope.

Gordon Docherty

So your anonymous correspondent (Ageism in a word, letters.computing.co.uk) believes the phrase ‘This role would suit a developer looking to move on from their first or second role after completing their education’ to be ‘not acceptable under the new age discrimination laws’?

Such wording will eventually be decided by case law, but in the meantime the writer is surely guilty of inadvertent discrimination by assuming that ‘completing their education’ is a phrase that can only apply to the young?

Richard Pratt

Harry Leeming stated that ‘the only way one can asses the danger of a new source of radiation is to compare it with an existing one’ (Why WiFi is fine, letters.computing.co.uk).

He then talks about the comparative power outputs of mobile phones, TV transmitters and WiFi. While power outputs can be important when assessing health risk, they are only a small part of the equation.
A 650 watt microwave will cook a baked potato in four minutes but it is not uncommon for a TV transmitter to have a power output exceeding 10,000 watts and we do not see sparrows dropping out of the air pre-cooked.

I am not saying that WiFi is a health risk, only that its potential to cause harm is much higher than the compared frequencies.

Phil Morris

All aboard the IT/biometrics industry gravy train (ID cards deals primed to start).

Stopping at Over Promising, Under Delivering, and all stations to Whitewash. Scheduled to arrive at Taxpayer Ripoff in 2010.

Simon

Most banks refund any internet banking losses. So security measures are really about reducing their own losses (HSBC questions online security tool).

When a bank introduces an expensive and inconvenient security measure carrying an extra gadget with you at all times ­ it simply means its losses are unacceptably high.

Today’s threats increasingly arise from identity theft. Just because your bank protects itself does not mean that you are safe.

After all, you buy other stuff online, and enter your credit card details and address, right?

Nick

I was saddened to read that more than a third of new cases of homelessness last year were young people aged under 25, according to statistics released by the government.

That is a staggering 6,000 young people ­ five or six times as many students attending the average secondary school ­ in just three months. Many of these young people are in difficulty for reasons completely outside their control.

The annual Byte Night event, which sees 250 senior IT executives, politicians and celebrities sleeping homeless for one night, helps.

Not only does it raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for NCH, the children’s charity, and its work with youth homelessness, it also helps raise the profile of the problem. But more needs to be done.

We cannot continue to let young people down ­ they need our support now, be it sleeping outside for one night, helping to raise awareness or reaching into your pockets.

Ken Deeks, Founder, Byte Night
www.bytenight.org.uk

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates for an advanced IT apprenticeship scheme that includes qualifications from Microsoft and CompTIA as well as 12-months’ integrated work experience (The adventures of a technology career).

The young people I meet are, in general, enthusiastic and passionate about IT. It is up to employers to keep that passion by offering clear career and professional development paths as well as involving IT in the business decision-making process.

Our biggest challenge is not to find enough young people who want a career in IT, but to find enough employers willing to invest in developing a young member of staff through their business.

Tony Pitchford

Databases are only as good and as accurate as the data entered by the human user (DVLA holding inaccurate data on 7.8 million drivers)

Let’s face it, even with all of the logging, auditing and error handling you still cannot program a human being to enter data 100 per cent accurately every time.

This means that data must be checked, checked again and re-checked and that takes time and money. In today’s world of doing things cheaper and faster, there is little room for covering the same ground more than once.

P Jones

As someone who has worked on very large government IT programmes, I am sceptical of the approach that the government is taking on identity cards ­ both with respect to the planning of the project and its handling of reasoned criticism, which it has either ignored or used as personal attacks to undermine.
I disagree with your statement that there is a ‘middle way’ in answering the ID cards proposals being put forward by the government (Pessimism over new technology must end, editor.computing.co.uk).

There is simply no way that us sceptics can make a dent in the government’s certainty that it is doing precisely the right thing.

The government’s attitude to freedom of information and weakening of the Data Protection Act shows me that we are unlikely to see ‘the necessary safeguards put into place’.

The only approach is the scrapping of this monstrosity and a fresh look at what it is we are seeking to protect ourselves from. ID cards have always had the air of a solution in desperate search of a problem to solve.

The government’s inability to build a coherent case for ID cards just lends credence to that assessment.

Stephen Thomas

If I did not have an ID card, I would not need to worry about what future governments might want to do with the information ­ because they would not have it ­ at least not in a central, easily-accessible location (Pessimism over new technology must end, editor.computing.co.uk).

Each of these new technologies is being touted as beneficial in some way or another, as I am sure CCTV was back in the 1950s. Had anyone thought there would be 14 million of the things spotting us up to 300 times a day, issuing fines and tracking our movements, would people have been quite so welcoming?

CCTV has done nothing to affect consistently rising crime rates. Any fool who thinks that CCTV is the cure for crime or terrorism surely would not mind a CCTV camera in every room of their house ‘if they are doing nothing wrong’.

The point is that most of the new technologies have not been fully discussed. And if there are safeguards, I am not aware of them or their effectiveness.

Lewis Roberts

Encouraging more young people to enter IT will only perpetuate the problem. (The adventures of a technology career, knowledge.computing.co.uk).

It would mean companies continuing to believe their current policies are sound. They would be able to carry on shedding older staff in the confidence there would be a steady supply of younger people to replace the ones they dump.

They would not need to spend money training existing staff ­ after all, that might encourage them to leave. Why bother, when they can be discarded, and replaced cheaply with youngsters who already have the newer skills.

This notion is a fallacy. I spent an extensive amount of money on training for my staff, and they stayed put for at least three times the industry average.

The most effective way to destroy ageism, sexism, or any other ism, would be for all young people to boycott IT entirely. This would force companies to look after the staff they have, rather than treating people as a commodity.

Name withheld on request

As a mere customer I am becoming concerned by the ideas being put forward by firms for using RFID (M&S forges ahead with RFID).

When I walk into a store or airport I have no desire for anyone to know who I am or what I bought last time. When I am ready to do so, I will make myself known and at that point, my details can be retrieved ­ when I have given my permission to do so. My personal privacy is about all I have left and RFID threatens to remove even that.I appreciate that firms are out to make money and I have no problem with that, but when it comes to the stage when I can no longer be anonymous anywhere then I have to start crying foul.
David Coull

Isn’t global warming and carbon footprints just spin to pave the way for a new commodities market? (Tread carefully with carbon).

The production of carbon dioxide by industry, as a single factor, would take 300-350 million years to make sufficient difference to the atmosphere as to cause a realistic change in the world.

Climate change is a natural phenomenon which operates in 800 to 1,000 year cycles. Industry makes no significant effect upon these cycles.

But consider the City broker, who buys and sells commodities without ever seeing them, but who makes significant fortunes in the transactions. The advent of computers has brought this trading floor to new heights and carbon trading is just another get-rich scheme.

Raymond A McKerron

In the days of tobacco advertising, the big players used to maintain they were not encouraging folks to take up smoking, but trying to steal existing smokers from the other brands. Non-smokers were apparently impervious to their advertising.

The claims by Google and Yahoo that they are trying to be more specific in who they advertise to sound rather familiar (Google’s battles are breaking new ground).

Their claim that small businesses only want to advertise to people who want their products will soon see these small businesses stagnate or disappear. You cannot expand if you only sell widgets to people who already buy widgets, you need to encourage the folks who may never have even seen them to start buying.

The search companies are simply trying to justify their hoarding of masses of data while they try to think of ways to make money from it.

Mike Pepper

Isn’t it a tad late to think about training and coaching when approaching the rocks? (Government IT needs more programme management).

Would it not be better to recognise the risk of the rocks and do something earlier rather than later?

Tim Reeks

I run a small business, and a few years ago took on someone semi-retired to do some part-time IT work.
I had to spend a lot of time showing him what was required. After six months, he decided that it was too hard, and left. This highlights some of the problems (The adventures of a technology career, knowledge.computing.co.uk).

In a small business, someone senior has to take time out to train, coach or educate someone in at least some IT skills ­ it is highly unlikely that you will find people with all the skills you require. This has to be balanced against the return on the investment ­ will the staff stay long enough after you have trained them for you to get a return?

It should be possible for the industry to come up with a scheme that would allow smaller firms to take on graduates or people retraining or returning to the workforce, and give them on-the-job training, with some form of commitment that ensures neither party loses out.

Tony Gore

Businesses are responsible for 40 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions and must behave responsibly immediately if we are to make any progress in saving the planet from the effects of global warming (Tread carefully with carbon, Computing, 24 May).

Too many businesses are wasteful, particularly with their current and future energy requirements for buildings, lighting and technology. More than 19 per cent of electricity is wasted, and lighting accounts for 19 per cent of the worldwide demand, with the prospect of increasing to 80 per cent by 2030.
In addition, there are too many staff travelling to unnecessary meetings instead of holding video and telephone conferences. Making basic changes to working practices will contribute significantly to reducing carbon emissions as well as improving the competitiveness of businesses.

The urgent demands on business as a consequence of global warming are also a catalyst for changing wasteful and inefficient operations, which will benefit corporate competitiveness.

Professor Garry Hunt

Mark Samuels believes that by encouraging young people into the industry, ageism in the industry will stop (The adventures of a technology career, knowledge.computing. co.uk). How? Won’t that just drive even more ageism? Surely the answer to ageism is to keep young people out of the industry almost entirely, so employers have little choice but to hire seasoned veterans.

Also, while finance may be more tedious than IT (and  I would like to see some real evidence of this), I don’t see many people in the finance industry working the long hours people in the IT industry work.
I wouldn’t recommend IT as a career to anyone.

Scot McSweeney-Roberts

Having worked in the IT industry all my life, I believe the important factor is how interesting people find it and their ability and willingness to continue learning new skills throughout their career (The adventures of a technology career, knowledge.computing.co.uk).

This explains why ‘just 19 per cent of IT workers are women’. The problem is not really to do with the image of IT, as is often said, but that many women simply don’t find IT interesting. How many mess about with computers for a hobby or read computer magazines?

A question I have always asked when interviewing candidates for IT jobs is: ‘Which computer magazines do you read?’ If they don’t read any, they are unlikely to have the degree of interest needed.
Large companies contribute to the problem by forcing people to specialise. This creates a narrow focus that hinders staff from developing their skills and kills innovation.

Robin Penny

Once again, you come up with the canard that there is a skills shortage in IT (The adventures of a technology career, knowledge.computing. co.uk).

It is a volatile industry, and any  particular skill doesn’t last long because there is always new software coming along. Employers seem to expect a constant supply of IT people trained in whatever skill they happen to need, available just like that.

It is not going to happen. Employers need to put some effort in: they need to take on some of the IT people who are available, even if they don’t  have exactly the skillset needed, and train them. It is part of the cost of doing business.

It is no surprise that women  and young people are avoiding the industry. It is simply good career planning on their part.

Jenny Barnes

The real issue is not the potential for a Big Brother culture, but whether or not we have already gone too far down the road to be able to stop it (Pessimism over new technology must end, editor.computing.co.uk).

Bryan Glick claims that the only danger of ID cards, for example, is that a future government might want to use the information in ways we cannot foresee, and that if we end up with a government like that, ID cards will be the least of our worries.

It is all too easy to foresee the ways in which information can be misused, and we already have that government in place. ID cards will not make us any safer from terrorists. They will not save us from crime. They will be intrusive, they will cost the taxpayer a ludicrously large amount of money, and they will turn a lot of law-abiding people into criminals because some will refuse to have an ID card and will probably end up going to prison for their human rights and beliefs.

Smart meters, however, don’t worry me in the slightest. Why would they? Not everyone will need one, but big users of electricity will benefit hugely and it is no bad thing to reduce power consumption.
The issue is not pessimism about new technology; it is pessimism about the use of new technology.

Ian Bourne

You make the fatuous assumption that one is either collectively in favour of the increasing use of surveillance or tracking technologies  such as CCTV, RFID or ID cards, or one is a knee-jerking Luddite (Pessimism over new technology must end, editor.computing.co.uk).

There is a third group to which many belong: those who acknowledge the benefits that these may bring, but are very wary of how politicians and other authorities are often prone to remove civil liberties by creep and subterfuge in the interests of making their own lives easier. They realise that initiatives to introduce such technologies must be challenged and the case tested at every turn.

A society that does not constantly do so will inevitably lose its freedoms. You need only study modern history to see how often and easily this happens to societies that drop their guard.

N Haughton

I’m not sure how long Harry Leeming’s arms are, but I have total respect for them, along with his superhuman eyesight and hearing (Why WiFi is fine, letters.computing. co.uk). In my experience, using WiFi-enabled devices  usually requires me to hold a PDA close to me, have a WiFi phone at my ear and a laptop sitting on my lap.  This keeps the WiFi adaptor (transmitter) within an inch of me and not the 50 inches he suggests.

I welcome the continuing reassessment of the safety of already accepted risks. With knowledge comes more knowledge. I expect our grandchildren will look back on us in the same way as we  look back on the Victorians’ attitude to health and safety.

John Hamilton

Without knowing if very low-power digital transmitters are a health risk ­ and who can until a lot more research is done ­ I can’t see us giving up wireless technology (Why WiFi is fine, letters.computing. co.uk).
The arguments against WiFi are weak now, mainly because we don’t know. If smokers won’t give up, I can’t see us giving up any time soon a technology which offers much greater benefits than tobacco. It is hard to give up something you enjoy, whatever the risk.

Keith Barlow