Re:Ok, so we have a list...

<snip>

>The be honest... I have my doubts.  "C" was supposed to allow us to 
>be platform independant, but it never materilized as a worthwhile 
>solution for "Real" applications (I consider real applications to be 
>things in the relm of A/P, A/R, G/L, etc)..

David,
        Our company competes with companies that write all their
"real" applications (A/R, G/L, P/R, etc) in C.  It can actually be
difficult to sell an AS/400 solution BECAUSE it's not written in C...

>In order to be TRULY platform independant, the interface elements 
>would have to seek the lowest common denominator... and that 
>precludes any GUI elements.  The interface would end up being 
>strictly text based..

Sort of.
If we simply say "no card readers, no diskette readers, no green screens"
then the Java implementation would be at least as inter-operable as
any C port is...  I LOVED my System/3, but times change and so do
paradigms.  It's not possible to push the /400 as a "mini-mainframe"
and as a "giant server" simultaneously.

>Don't get me wrong... I *LIKE* the idea of JAVA... and think that, if 
>any system can truly support a platform independant object system, 
>the AS/400 is the one (Heck, they've been platform independant from 
>the get-go)... I'm just a pesemist :)

The hardware guys have done a spectacular job isolating our 
programs from the silicon.  It remains to be seen if the 
software guys can do the same.  I have my doubts.  Look at
how "glued-on" the IFS and shared folders are...  Security, 
save/restore, reading/writing with native software: all are
"beyond the Pale."  IBM'll have to do better than that if
they intend to keep native support for these types of objects.

Buck Calabro
Commsoft, Rensselaer, NY

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