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March 05, 2007
Well, (5) * (3) = 15, Doesn't It?
Many years ago, I was working at a university with a research center that was developing a new general ledger system. That was back in the mainframe days, and at the time, most organizations developed their own software, even G/L, in house. So, they hired a group of students to help develop the system. The center had a number science students who needed summer employment, so they hired them to help develop the general ledger system.
Things went along swimmingly until the first major review. The accounts would not sum correctly. Eventually, the problem was traced to the code that one of the science students had written. Turned out he didn't understand that, in a financial application, numbers in parentheses, like ($12,345), have a special significance. His code ignored the parentheses.
Which brings me to the career question of this week:
What does a systems analyst need to know?
Posted by DavidK at March 5, 2007 11:08 AM | Permalink