Re: At the risk of sounding like an AS/400 rah-rah... -- MIDRANGE-L

Adam,

I got up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday ... and had deleted the previous threads of this discussion ... there are a lot of *nix guys with home systems to "hack on", but I suspect few MS Server OS's ... just client OS.

Don't you know that the Thesaurus gives "geek" as the synonym of "Unix maven" ;-) ... just like my daughter's boyfriend (who is a Physics major ... won't be earning his $$$ in IT) who has a BSD sticker on the rear bumper of his truck! (I prefer "Penn State" magnetic stickon's, but that's another story). My wife & I go up the wall when she wears her "I love my geek" t-shirt!

' been working with a Windows /*nix guy at the local Community College where I help out by teaching an AS/400 course each semester. They got in an AS/400 in the Spring, but haven't run any classes on it until now due to low enrollments ... no one knows the AS/400 on the college's oursourcer's staff. It seems that QSECOFR became disabled and no one has a back door to re-enable it ... and they didn't back up the machine because "it wasn't being used" ... if there is a problem, we can just reinstall the system, RIGHT??????

ARGH! Am I taking your side????

Professional is both a description of "do you earn money doing it" as well as "are you serious about it and do you communicate that to the rest of the world" ... as someone who is probably more a businessman than technician, perhaps I look at things differently.

John

At 01:53 PM 1/22/2003, you wrote:

You interpreted wrong.

"non-professionals" as in people that don't work with computers for a
living.  You don't have "people that do not work with computers for a
living" running an AS/400 at home to "mess with it".  You DO have that for
windows and *nix people.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Myers - MM" <jmyersmm@sbsusa.com>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: At the risk of sounding like an AS/400 rah-rah...


> Adam,
>
> Please don't refer to folks who use the other architectures as "not as
> professional" ... the opposite may be true in many cases!
>
> I would say that there is a MUCH higher degree of skill required to
> administer a "*nix" system than an iSeries given a similar workload.  That
> is a KEY part of the iSeries "Value Equation" ... that it can make mere
> mortals extraordinary!
>
> The AS/400 is a business machine ... intended to be used by people who
> don't have graduate degrees in Computer Science ... it wasn't built to do
> the "fun" things that you can do with the other architectures (excluding
> the AS/400 powered www.ScoreBook.com , of course).
>
> Unless you have a home-based business (or are a VERY serious AS/400
> developer), you won't have an AS/400 at home ...
>
> John Myers