Re: Left AS/400 and Returned

On Mon, 02 May 2005 11:51:50 -0700
 "Dave Odom" <Dave.Odom@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Don in DC said:
> And,
> besides IBM, the iSeries community, as a whole, is not
> helping matters
> by touting legacy application development methodologies,
> languages, file
> structures, presentation layers, etc., in somewhat of a
> religious way
> and therefore seen as legacy and inflexible to the new
> ways and
> therefore not appealing to management wanting to go to
> something else.  

First, "legacy" needs to treated as a good thing.  It takes
a lot to become legacy.  People use the term as "old and
out of style" when in reality it means "proven" in this
case.

We "tout" them (or at least I do) because they ARE legacy,
proven and work.

"Inflexible" is unfairly paired with the term legacy.  It
shouldn't be.  Instead, the term "inflexible" should be
only given to those cases where it's true.  The shop where
the programmers are still using RPGII, not even a single
subroutine, and refuse to better themselves at all. 

Inflexible is also in the eye of the beholder.  Some would
call me inflexible because I choose not to use Websphere or
similar technologies.  But I see others as inflexible
because they won't use any ILE, structured programming, or
even a subroutine to save their life.  (Long live GOTO!)

Second, if it's not appealing to managment to get the job
done, save money, have great up-time and all they want is
pretty pictures and quadruple support costs, then the wrong
people are in managment.  

That has been the trend in IT ever since it became trendy
to be an IT manager.  

Brad