Re: MI as the MI language of the as400.

From: Dan Bale <dbale@samsa.com>
> I concur with most of your post, Leif.  The tendency is there to
overdesign.
> You didn't mention hindsight though, which, of course, is 20/20.
>

The issue was not if one could improve ILE, but rather that ILE is too
complex for its own good. It should be simplified. Since I'm in the mood
of being reminded of wisdom of an age gone by, the following words
from A.C. Hartman (a student of an old colleague of mine, Per Brinch
Hansen): "In the world of Brinch Hansen's, all systems tend towards
reduced entropy over time and toward a blissful state of ultimate
simplicity. Each new release of the operating system is smaller than
the previous release, consumes fewer resources, runs faster on
simpler hardware, provides a reduced set of easier to use features
than the last release, and carries a lower price tag. Hardware
designers espousing the same philosophy produce successive
single-chip microprocessors with exponentially declining transistor
counts from generation to generation, dramatically shrinking die sizes,
and reducing process steps by resorting to fewer, simpler device
types. No one would need to "invent RISC computing in this world,
since reduced feature sets would be an inexorable law of nature."

Alas, Hartman is describing something that may "exist is some
parallel dimension to ours" because that ain't the way the trend
is. We are forgetting (or rather: ignoring) that complexity is the
enemy and should be avoided at all costs.