Re: AS/400 Gasping For Air ??

["Dennis Lovelady" <dennis@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Simon:

>12 years is too low.  Much of the code in OS/400 came from the
>System/38.  That's why OS/400 is known as XPF
>internally.  eXtended control Program Facility -- many of you
>will remember the OS for the S/38 was called
>CPF.  The new lads and lassies have just learned something --
>does that make me a geezer or do I have to
>remember toggling in the bootstrap code in Octal before
>I qualify?  So lets average over 20 years.

Yes, these make for much more reasonable numbers or workers on the project of
O/S.  What I was trying to resolve, is whether IBM uses that number in fact,
or only in estimating a project (I believe that the LOC estimate came from
the IBM consulting group, unless I misremember).  The original comments were
stating that a project was going to take a certain amount of time, because of
the 2000 LOC/year/person, so I used a roundabout way of getting a
demonstration of those numbers in practice.  Thank you for doing so, Simon.
As it turns out, the numbers would seem to be at least palpable, given your
explanation of the "project" at hand.  I have no doubt of your expertise in
this area - you and I go back a ways.  :^)

Of course, a very large portion of that (or any) project would be in design,
information gathering, "how to," user discussions, organization, file
layouts, database design, process structure, goal definition, documentation,
redesign, etc.  Probably, this is on the order of more than 50% of the
project.  (Out of curiosity, what's a reasonable % for this sort of
overhead?)  Given that the original question had to do with replacing an
existing system, I still have to wonder if the estimate was not tremendously
overstated, since most of that work has already been done (assuming that the
new product will be an exact or near emulation of the original).  Still, the
budgeted amount of the time would seem to be much too small for the project
at hand.

Thanks for your patience, Simon.
--
Dennis Lovelady                    Simpsonville, SC
mail: dennis@lovelady.com
URL:  http://lovelady.piedmont.net
ICQ:  5734860
--
I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!


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