Conference 7.286::digital

                I have  received unoffical recognition for Sedt by having 
        the company provide  hardware at home for further development and 
        maintenance.  This is  OK  because  I have done it as a hobby and 
        never counted on getting any  kind  of return on the thousands of 
        hours that I have put into it.
        
        Anker

        re .0
        
        You could always put a Dectalk in the corner of your office,
        going "Good one, Martin..."
              "AttaBoy, Martin..."
              "Damn Good Hack, Martin..."
        ad nauseum.
        It may annoy the neighbours but it would do wonders for your
        ego. (Shades of a yuppie eliza program...)
        
        Seriously, though I only use the odd (sp) hack of yours, Martin,
        Consider this an "ATTABOY".
        
        re .1
        
        Anker, bear in mind there is one major difference between you
        and most of the other Midnight Hackers...
        
        You are a marketeer aad so find it natural to sell yourself
        and your capabilities/accomplishments. You are one of the quietest
        self-sellers I have ever met, but I daresay you have the skills.
        
        q
        

When I do something significant which was not called for in my formal
job requirements, it goes into my self-assessment for my performance/salary
review.  I believe this has paid off in several dimensions.

When my father was working as a mechanic for PanAm, he several times
received cash awards for good suggestions on how to improve operations.
The awards were 10% of what the suggestion committee thought the suggestion
would save the company in the first year of its implementation, I recall.

I do not believe that such a program is considered compatible with the
kind of expertise and work attitudes that a WC4, exempt, professional
engineer is supposed to display.  Engineers are *supposed* to be thinking
about how to improve things (sort of like in the recent HP computer ads,
"what if we . . .").

On the other hand, my father did not spend time in the workshop downstairs
at night trying to come up with new maintenance procedures for JT9D jet
engine fuel controls (which are about as complicated as Babbage
implementing a Vax with gears, BTW).  The PanAm program was not intended
to deal with people who spend lots of time implementing Lemple-Ziv data
compression algorithms.  And of course the mechanics were all members
of the Transport Workers Union, certainly a more confrontational
environment than we are supposed to have (though it wasn't as bad as
being a British coal miner, I'm sure).


The Software Tools Review Board could get you funded for a few quarters
working on a hack which was even more excruciatingly enjoyable than
your regular work assignment.  (As long as it benefited VMS users, that
is).  But I am not sure it got much funding, if any, this fiscal year.
And it would not mean more money in your pocket, just that the money
in your pocket was earned while having Real Fun.  (If you find money
to be an important motivator).  And you could be known as someone who
had an idea worth funding, so you get recognition too.
				/AHM

                Software tools  review  board?  Never heard of them.  How 
        does one reach them?
        
        Anker

Re .4:

Actually, my source says that STRB got about $200K this past fiscal
year, which sounds like enough for 2-3 hacker-years worth of funding,
apparently a drastic cut from prior years.

Re .5:

Contact Henry L. Apfelbaum (SIVA::APFELBAUM) for more info on the STRB.
If you are in an engineering group with a representative on the board, he
could tell you who the representative is.
				/AHM

Ahh Gi'day...

    No word is kinder than that which bears dollars. :-)
    
    I think  it should be official!! I couldn't survive without some of the
    tools  provided by some people, whom (I don't know) probably get little
    recognition for their effort. 
    
    There are plenty more tools around which DON'T get known about, because
    of  the  lack of incentive that Digital shows these people. Things like
    DECSA SDA type tools (more useful than POD etc), and many others! There
    must be many more I don't hear about. Pity.

    Plug here  for Barry Scott and Mick Emery (EMACS), Dave Porter (NMAIL),
    Stan  (WHAT  etc  etc  etc) who make my life a lot easier, and probably
    heaps of others.

				{dennis{{{ --

	About the best "reward" for a hacking job is the satisfaction of 
people using it! The next best might just be the "hack" becoming a 
supported product in/of Digital.

	While not everything is useful to our customers, much of the 
internal use only tools would make a valuable addition to the "repeatable 
sales" efforts of Software Services.

	Then again, there is the old joke we used to have in the field. 
After running a benchmark through the night to win a piece of business you 
were offered a split of the sales rep.'s commission. What you got was not 
spendable, but it built working teams!

Regards, Ira Grollman (GSG Systems Engineering), nostalgic for the days 
when you could "give" something to DECUS in good faith!

    Two possible alternatives: (1) submit it to DECUS, as the people
    who actually LOOK for tools will [usually] check out the newest
    DECUS submissions, or (2) depending on the particular area of
    usefulness, maybe find the appropriate ASSETS system in which to
    make it available.  No monetary compensation, but recognition amongst
    peers, and after all, we work for the same company: you developed
    your hack for a reason, so surely there's somebody else who could
    make good use of it!
    
    Jon

At one time, when I was in a group that did regular, formal reviews, a manager
I worked for - one of the best managers I've EVER worked for at DEC (Tom Hayden,
he deserves the mention) - added a reference to some of my tools to my review.
Note that HE brought it up; I didn't.  THAT'S something that gives you a good
feeling.

I don't expect any direct reward for my hacks, any more than I expect any direct
reward for answering people's questions in notesfiles - something that takes
as much time these days for many hackers!  DEC has made it clear that they
encourage me to do useful hacks, and they provide the facilities as long as I
continue to do the work I'm supposed to be doing - but no more.  In return, I
make my hacks available to anyone at DEC who wants them - but I reserve the
right to ALSO give them to others, or take copies with me.  (I recognize that
a conflict on this issue could easily arise.  It hasn't so far, I hope it never
will - but I'll fight it out if I have to.)
							-- Jerry

It's  also worth pointing out here that today's midnight hack may be
tomorrow's product.  I started playing around with pseudo-terminals because
I thought they were fun.  I talked the Software Tools Review Board into
funding V1 of PTYCON-32 as a test vehicle for terminals applications.  It
turned out that there was such a need for exactly this function that a V2
of PTYCON-32 was done, and the PTY driver from that effort is now shipped
as a central component of the DEC/Test Manager product.

Hackers often see (and fill) needs that slip through the cracks of our
main-line software development process.

--PSW

        Gosh, and I thought you got the idea from PTYCON on TOPS-20..
        What a disappointment!  Here, it finally looked like something
        from the TOPS-10/TOPS-20 environment had made it over to VMS
        land without the claim that it had been invented there..
        
        Tom

>       What a disappointment!  Here, it finally looked like something
>       from the TOPS-10/TOPS-20 environment had made it over to VMS
>       land without the claim that it had been invented there..
 
    But, but, but...Lot's came from TOPS-10. There is the calling sequence.
    And RMS, and Fortran, and COBOL, and DCL, and SOS, and TECO. And
    then there's the notion of demand paging without the hardware keeping
    a reference bit. Or chasing shared page pointers. And BLISS....

RE: .12

The original idea was from OPSER on TOPS-10 and especially from PTYCON on
TOPS-20.  I have never claimed to have invented PTYs, nor did I mean for .11
to imply in any way that I invented PTYs independently or never looked at
the TOPS documentation.  Quite to the contrary.  Once the STRB funding was
secured, the first thing I did was get the OPSER and PTYCON documentation
from the -10 and -20 software notebooks.  I made a list of functions, commands,
and the syntax.  I then chose what was doable on VMS in the time allotted.
Finally, I re-cast the syntax of those functions I chose to implement in
a DCL flavor so that the result would look like it belonged as a part of VMS.
PTYCON-32 owes a very great deal to its predecessors on the DECSYSTEM-20
and DECsystem-10.

--PSW

	********************************************************
	*						       *
	*    All interesting products DEC has ever produced    *
	*            started out as midnight hacks.	       *
	*						       *
	********************************************************


Not completely true, of course, but I've heard an impressive list 
of examples.  Anyone care to propose examples and counter-examples?

    ALL-IN-1 was born in Charlotte, North Carolina as a Software Services
    presales effort at the request of two customers.