RE: [MI400] RE: MI emulator

["Steve Richter" <srichter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: mi400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:mi400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 3:09 PM
To: mi400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [MI400] RE: MI emulator

>I must admit I find the fascination with MI hard to understand.  We all
>"own" the C compiler now (C++ too for that matter) - the majority of the
>useful MI functions are surfaced in the C library and in many cases will
>outperform the "native" (not that there is such a thing) MI anyway.

>Just what is it that can be done so much better in MI that makes it worth
>dealing with the absence of tools, documentation, syntax checkers,
>debuggers

After I got out of the Army I was taking some programming courses at night
at Brooklyn College.  The first class was in PL/I and I did ok, but I didnt
really understand what was going on.  The next class was in S/370 assembler
and things immediately fell into place. It didnt take MI for me to
understand the as400, but being able to understand the system from top to
bottom is still pretty appealing.  Its just the way I am able to understand
things. Every concept or object is made up of details.  To understand the
concept, I need to be able to examine the details.

Now what I dont understand ( dont have access to the details ) is why IBM is
so control freaky about their systems. IBM decided that ILE and its
languages would be off limits to those who wanted to make them better. I
think you can argue that without the competition from outsiders, there was
no real incentive for the IBMers to improve their products.  The result is
an ILE that has not been improved since it was released. In the meantime MS
has leapfrogged IBM yet again with its CLI initiative.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/

Just my opinion Jon, but the details indicate to me that there is a link
between the lock down of MI and the AS400's difficulties in the marketplace.

-Steve