Flashback to the early 1990s, when this pilot fish's group is developing PC applications that will pull down mainframe data, using a fancy new thing called middleware.
"I was responsible for the middleware between the PC and a mainframe CICS transaction," says fish. "Everything was working, but the transactions were taking 46 seconds, and naturally it was a problem with the middleware.
"We loaded the PC software to replicate the test and it certainly took 46 seconds. Nineteen seconds after hitting Enter, we saw the notice 'Retrieving data from the mainframe.' Eight seconds later the notice disappeared, and 19 seconds after that the data appeared on the screen.
"We still had work to do, but 8 seconds was not 46, so we returned the software with our findings.
"Next day, we received a 'fixed' build. It still took 46 seconds, but now it would pop up 'Retrieving data from the mainframe' as soon as you hit Enter, with the notice disappearing just before the data appeared -- and once again, middleware was the problem.
"I never again built software people couldn't see that didn't incorporate timers."
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