It's Not Easy Being A SAS Programmer
From sasCommunity
It’s Not Easy Being a SAS Programmer!
Well, we all know that it isn’t easy being a SAS programmer, don’t we? And, as the Featured Lunchtime Speaker for SAS Global Forum 2010, I will be giving a 30-minute talk on that very topic:
I hope that you will be able to join me on Tuesday, April 13th from noon to 1:30pm for lunch and for my presentation. They have a great menu planned, and of course the conversation cannot be beat!
See the SAS Global Forum 2010 conference registration material for information on how to register for this extra-fee event:
Information on all of the SAS Global Forum 2010 featured speakers can be found here:
I would like to invite you to add your own 2 cents on what you find challenging about being a SAS programmer to the Discussion tab of this page. Do you have some interesting observations, pertinent comments, incisive insights, or some amusing anecdotes that you can share with your fellow SAS programmers about the various issues of actually being a SAS Programmer? If so, I am sure that we would all love to read them!
To kick this effort off:
Many years ago, I worked for an organization that licensed SAS on mainframe servers. Every year, my boss, who was very cost conscious and not very SAS savvy, would pour over the SAS software bill and question the need for each and every product. For some reason, he would always fixate upon SAS/AF and SAS/FSP and try to have them cut. I was always defending these products because they were actively used by a handful of SAS programmers for data entry and reporting. And, every year, I just barely beat off his license-trimming efforts and succeeded in having them renewed.
In my last year at that job, I created a SAS/AF – SAS/FSP application that was used organization-wide in over a hundred locations throughout the United States. The organization had not yet implemented an Intranet, and this SAS/AF - SAS/FSP application was the only way that the far-flung offices could enter operational data and perform dynamic reporting on that data across the entire organization. The branch chiefs and the line staff at all of the field offices loved it. And, I even got a congratulatory visit from the commissioner of the organization.
That SAS/AF – SAS/FSP application was nominated for a major industry award and we were invited to go and receive a medal and a certificate with other nominees in a posh ceremony in Washington, DC. Needless to say, my boss was all smiles. He enjoyed going to the ceremony and the great attention that he got for being the manager of the group that had created the application. Oddly enough; he never mentioned his yearly attempts to get rid of SAS/AF and SAS/FSP; attempts which ceased forever from that day forward.
