Neon Enterprise Software Blog

It’s that time of year again – caps, gowns, degrees: graduations!  I recently took a trip to Tucson, AZ to see my brother graduate from the University of Arizona with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.  Yes, I’m a very proud sister J  This made me think of all the new computer science (CS) grads out there that ...

As an Assembler Developer that has been coding for a good few years now, I was thinking about some of the critical things I have learned over the years that have really made me a better programmer.  These are my top ten things you should learn as a new developer, or the top ten things you should make sure you teach your incoming new ...

A recent Computerworld article (Bank of America touts mainframe work as a safe career)touts the mainframe as a safe haven for those considering a career in IT. This is an interesting article because the usual spiel you hear in industry trade rags is that the mainframe is dying and only a fool would work on such a platform. It is good to hear an ...

One of the more popular topics for my blog has been IT salaries -- more accurately, salaries for data professionals -- so every time I hear about some new survey or news related to salaries I fire up the blog and get to posting. Today's news comes from the Dice 2008-09 Annual Salary Survey of technology professionals. This survey of more than ...

One of the questions I often get when meeting new mainframers or when speaking at a career day is what do you actually do everyday?  Yes, I am a nerd at heart and I spend a lot of time coding HLASM, but there is a lot more too this career than what you may think. While I would recommend you checking out session 3113 at SHARE in Austin, What ...

Some folks think that DBAs and application developers inhabit different universes. At times this may seem true, but the successful DBA must understand application development and the issues involved in programming and design. Although database administrators usually are viewed as system "folk," they most definitely must be tied into the ...

Have you ever taken a look at the Jobfox Top 25 Most Recession-Proof U.S. Job Candidates? The report identifies the jobs — classified by specific professions — that are in greatest demand by recruiters and other employer agents using Jobfox to search for and find new or replacement workers. Well, the latest Jobfox report, reflecting ...

I’ve been hearing some conflicting opinions about the future of mainframe careers.  People seem to have different ideas on what the job market will be like in 10-15 years, varying from one extreme to the other.  There are those that believe the mainframe workforce is entirely healthy, and perhaps overly so – that there are ...