RE: GUIs vs Green Screens (was After 2000)

Paul,

I was going to flame, but you did it for me. Your final "kicker" as you put 
it is what I was going jump on.

The thing is, program FOR the AS/400 is the best thing to do. Programming 
ON the AS/400 is not the best.
Whereas, programming ON the PC can be a wonderful, and often the best thing 
in the world (for a programmer). But programming FOR the PC (namely 
Windows) is not the best thing to look forward to.

After how often do you spend day after day trying to debug a application on 
the AS/400 that blows up once in while, when the cursor is moved into a 
certain field? Or when the mouse is clicked on a certain part of the 
screen? I would say, never. You get to spend time coding our business 
rules, and database manipulation routines. On the PC, you almost never have 
time for the later, because you're so busying trying to figure out bugs in 
Windows ("The GUI environment without a brain").

IBM did an informal study a few years ago. On the AS/400 80 percent of the 
time was spent coding the application function, whereas 20 percent or so 
was spent coding the user interface.  On the PC, however (Windows 
specifically) 20 percent of the application development time was spent 
coding the application's function, whereas 80 percent is spent coding the 
user interface. This doesn't mean you code PC apps faster, it just means 
you spend a heck of a lot longer debugging and coding your user interface.

If IBM had only listen to us way back when COMMON was in Miami (early 80s). 
We told them at that time, that we wanted to start going graphical. The PC 
was brand new, and we wanted to us it as a 5250 device to avoid having two 
hunking devices on our desks.

The main problem, the way I hear it, is that today, the "big customers" 
that sill use dumb terminals keep telling IBM things like "GUI is okay, but 
you gotta make it work on my existing terminals too" or "Go ahead and do 
it, but don't abandon my 5250 devices".

In my opinion, IBM interpreted these comments as "don't do GUI on the 400". 
When what they (the customers) where really saying, is "DO GUI." I suppose 
you could follow that with, but don't _remove_ support for the 2,000 dumb 
terminals I have installed. This to me means "go GUI", and add it to new 
apps that you produce, including operating system interfaces, and make it 
work with Windows, or whatever, but don't initially do a wholesale rewrite 
of the user interface that makes my dumb terminals not work with the 400. 
After all, people do embrace new technology after a while, but they really 
dislike throwing away stuff that they've already paid for, and still works.





On Wednesday, June 18, 1997 10:17 PM, PaulMmn [SMTP:PaulMmn@ix.netcom.com] 
wrote:
> At 9:09 PM 6/16/97, HankHeath@aol.com wrote:
> >Anecdote to go with the GUI/Green screen thread:
> >
> >I have had a couple of VisualBASIC (VB) programmers working on one of my
> >projects. They absolutely *gush* at how wonderful it is to program in 
that
> >environment.
> >
> >The latest is an ex-mainframer, ex-CIO, ex-whatever you want he did type 
of
> >guy. So, he knowledgeable compares how difficult it used to be to code, 
and
> >how power his GUI-driven code is now.
> >
> >He regularly calls me over to his workstation: "Hey, Hank! You gotta see
> >this!" And he shows me an elegant piece of code that uses object 
technology
> >to eliminate hundreds of lines of code. Neat. He's good.
> >
> >The kicker is that invariably after he shows me the execution of that 
elegant
> >piece of code, the PC rewards him by giving him a General Protection 
Fault.
>
>
> I don't know whether to file this under 'AS/400' or 'Humour.'   (:
>
> --Paul E Musselman
> PaulMmn@ix.netcom.com



Bob Cozzi
Bob@rpgdev.net
http://www.rpgdev.net


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