Re: Does Old=Bad? -- MIDRANGE-L

I would say Old = Bad, in a shop that does not promote any Training and implementation of new technologies that the AS/400 is capable of supporting. Or a shop that does not address fundamental problems in the infrastructure, and does not allocate the funds to promote a solution. I am speaking form a practical perspective, as usual. By infrastrucure I refer to having to scroll with the page up arrow whern you could make you of the pull-down/mouse for example.

Phil Kestenbaum

----- Original Message -----

From: Ted J Barry

To: RPG400-L@midrange.com ; MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com

Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 12:55 PM

Subject: Does Old=Bad?

The great debate continues...Here's some fun for a Friday (or some of you who enjoy this stuff on the weekend). This also may be useful research for those of us flailing against the sharks.
Just because our faithful AS/400 is old, does that mean it's bad? I like the famous quote (sorry can't remember the author); "What people can not understand, they resist." I just got back from an Access database class and man was that thing "buggy".
All of this talk about Java and IBM needing to sell something "new" or advanced technologies. Let's get real, how advanced are they (I know I'm mixing and mangling here but I believe these are all issues we deal with, so bare with me)? When having to rely on an operating system (starts w/a "W" ends with a "S") that crashes on occasion and trying to keep up with those who live on the bleeding edge, COME ON FOLKS, DO WE REALLY BELIEVE THIS STUFF? But, in our organizations.....there's a black box over there in the accounting area, or maybe in your computer room with a raised floor, crunching numbers, blowing through millions of records, not bothering anyone........and silent. Yet, non technical or sometimes over zealous yahoos that don't know what they're talking about are able to convince some organizations that "Oh, that AS/400 you have is old." They don't understand the 400, have never seen one, probably took a basic or cobol class in collage and found they didn't have the aptitude for programming and got their first job as a d.b.a. for some company running a vax.
I say no, not me! I know what my AS/400 is capable of and I'm going to continue using RPG, RPG/400, RPGIV, RPGIV ILE, and now e-RPG. It works, I understand it, it IS upward compatible and now that I can write CGI programs with it and access and update from a web browser, why would I want to move to platforms that are just "wanna be" AS/400s and crash on occasion? It just doesn't make sense, or business sense. If I can continue to use what I already have, and mix it with HTML, Java, and/or JavaScript and save my company money, then....WHAT THE HECK MAN!
Enough said........ :-)