Re: OS/400 command set

On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Dr Syd Nicholson wrote:

> Agreed James, OS/400 is "boring"
> Good solid, reliable, dependable, and "boring"
> But - boring to whom. To the propellor heads who want pictures, sound, and all
> sorts of other gizmos, or to business who want a machine to do a job and don't
> care about the "gimmicks". The iSeries can have "Gimmicks" should they be
> required (eg. SMS messaging) via the appropriate attached external devices.
> Applications can be GUIized, sound and video added via PC clients. The iSeries
> can be the centre of all this, the repository and control centre of
> applications. The iSeries doesn't need to be "boring".
> Personally, I don't think OS/400 is any more, or any less, "boring" than any
> other server system. It is the clients that do the exiting stuff, the servers
> just serve.

I hope that my post didn't imply that "boring" meant "not good".  It is
the "boring" aspect of the iSeries that makes it good for business
deployment.  But "boring" does not make for hype.  It does not attract a
lot of developers.  I am not saying that the iSeries is inferior - just
saying what I believe to be the truth about hype.

Remember that all the GUI, sound, etc. things you mentioned are not done
on or by the iSeries.  The clients do them.  UNIX servers can also do all
those things.  Have you ever played on an SGI Octane2?  Now that's
exciting!  It is easy to hype such systems because they are naturally
interesting.  This doesn't mean they are better.  When someone posts how
IBM doesn't hype the iSeries they need to keep in mind that a lot of hype
happens because people are interested in whatever is being hyped.  People
are naturally interested in having 3 flat screen displays or emulating
large crowds or running massive networks.  It is easy to hype those things
because they are self-hyping (there's a new word for you).  If you put a
neophyte in front of a 5250 screen (the iSeries native display) and a
linux screen with XFree86 (one of linux's native displays) I gaurantee
they will choose linux over iSeries every time.  Not because iSeries is
not good but because the person sees a lot of possibilities on the linux
box.

James Rich