Kind of frusterated...

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Recently I landed a job with an insurance company. They actually contacted me as I had an internship there.
Now everyone there is kind and welcoming but I feel that I'm really in over my head as far as their technology goes.

Let me further explain:
They operate an IBM i5 series server which is LOADED with IBM proprietary stuff.
Their interface for their "processors" and "underwriters" (employee positions) is a text driven user interface that cannot display pictures.
To remedy this situation they have employed a second Windows XP picture server which may just be a common desktop machine.
This picture server holds pictures for insurance data and it gets linked to via FTP when something needs to be updated from the I5 server.

Here is the problem,
They use COBOL and RPG to query the database and work with files. Since the programs were all written in house there is no documentation to be found.
Upgrading the system would be damn near impossible because they have patched the thing so many times without any documentation.
The database is a DB2 system which means that it does not play nicely with others. The whole thing is being held together with a truckload of custom undocumented software with quite
cryptic file names. Everyone there is 50+ and they don't know any modern programming languages. By modern I mean C and foreward.

I'm not sure what to do. I try to pick up a little everyday but I don't know enough about insurance nor do I know any COBOL, RPG, javascript (for the website agent portal).

I'm not sure what to do here. I'm not thinking about quitting just yet but it is heavily undocumented and outdated technology that cannot easily be updated.
I'm having to deal with files named things like PDK01. Sure that might mean something to somebody who wrote the system but they have made it damn near impossible for a newcomer to under
stand.

Perhaps the worst part is that they just make me watch them for 8 hours each day expecting something to suddenly make sense...

Just venting some frusterations perhaps. They pay is good and the hours are great...but at what cost?

[benny!]

Hey PO,

IMHO changing the complete system sounds like a really big project. Without knowing it, my feeling is that I would not touch it (never change a running system), esp. if you are not sure what it does. 

What exactly do they expect from you? What should you do? Just mainting the old code base? Are you the only IT person there?

Keep your head up!

Best,
benny!

[Jim]

The pay is good and the hours are great

<sarcasm>then you just need job satisfaction and who cares how insane it is.

You're not going to be able to fix it all at once.  The skill of a maintenance programmer is very much about being able to dive in, work out what it's supposed to do, and fix just the bit that's broken leaving everything else alone.  Making it better piece by piece for the person who follows you.  It's hard.  It probably took me 10 years before I could confidently go into other people's code and just be able to read it.  It was a lot of fun learning to be able to do that though.

Having said that, there are always other places to work.  Some are well run, some not.  Some have modern code bases, some not so much.  Your real problem will come when someone makes you responsible for something mission critical

javascript is worth learning, by the way.

Jim

[Shockwave]

You have two things to familiarise yourself with - An ancient code base and the workings of an insurance company!

It's not going to be easy, but it's not worth walking out of a job after you've only been in there a short time.. Especially if you don't have another job to go to.

In the business world, as has been said above, you are bound to run into lots of old stuff that has never been replaced because it does the job abd to replace it would be a risk and cost a large amount of time and money.

You'll need to learn to adapt to unfamiliar code disciplines as a professional programmer so you could take this as an opportunity to learn some quirky stuff.  There's loads of Cobol and RPG out there, as shit as it is, the people who wrote it are beginning to retire and there will be good money to be made for people with Cobol and RPG experience. 

My advice to you would be to stay at least until you have a good understanding of it that you can put on your CV.

[Jim]

From my coding jobs I know more about golf, skateboarding, electronic casino gaming and the Australian superannuation system than I ever wanted to know.  You will pick it up.

Jim

[combatking0]

It's frustrating, but you're not going to learn this all in one day, or even a month. Nobody should expect anybody to.

It took me years to learn how to use Javascript with PHP and SQL effectively. I'm not a master of any of those three languages by any measure, but I can make them talk to eachother in a manner of speaking.

My advice, and you don't have to act on this, is to prioritise - find out what they want you to act on first, and learn about that. Everything else can be a side project, but focus on one language. Once you are confident with JS / RPG / COBOL, then move on to the next highest priority language.

While doing so, try to make the case for upgrading to a newer system - they are easier to maintain, and so require fewer man-hours, and so cost less overall. They may want to hear the business side of things, rather than the technical side, so far as I understand. But my understanding is incomplete. Find out what it is they want before charging in with these suggestions.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Thanks for the advice guys.

I just had an "oh shit" first week.

[Moroboshisan]

I just had an "oh shit" first week.

...you better become accustomed to that sentence... try to grasp some basics to become aware of "what to do when {put_whatever_damn_accident_name} happens" ... being able to pass more than 6 months in the same place will give you a bare idea of what your job can give you... If you don't like the perspective move along...

[relsoft]

In the meantime, you can make the interface nicer by making a simple front-end in say C#/Vb.Net.:*)

Since it's a console based app, you can just auto-input using say an autogenerated .bat file.

;*)

Hang in there buddy.