Start Somewhere

This is my first Blog entry. I'm hoping after putting this entry in I can go back later and edit or delete it. I have no idea what this going to look like but I have to start somewhere.

Blogging is one of those things that as an IT person everyone thinks I know about. But how can you keep up with all the crazy things the IT industry is throwing up? If it is not Blogs, mashing and Web 2.0 then its a host of new open standards and no-one can tell which standards are actually mature or useful.

I'm not too proud to say I started as a Fortran and Cobol programmer. There are still people in gainful employment who write Cobol. Unfortunately some are now my staff. Yes I look after a group of programmers. Most of which work on a mainframe. We are trying to update. I've now got some Java staff and a number of Sun boxes. We have got a weblogic application platform and we are trying to move forward to adopt SOA. What a struggle that is. It's got to better than programming for green screens but why isn't the path better trod? Why isn't the road to the widely accepted new paradigm as obvious as the main highway?

This blog is expected to be a fairly long lasting chronicle of a hapless and anonymous government department in its quest of the holy grail of SOA. This is going to take a while and my observation is that the goalposts change on the journey and that everyone has to find their own path - a personal journey to geek enlightenment.