"Killer Apps" (was: Re: New names) -- MIDRANGE-L

Buck,

In a message dated 1/29/01 5:16:57 PM Eastern Standard Time,
buck.calabro@aptissoftware.com writes:

<<snip>>

>Excel was first written for Mac, then ported to Windoze,
>1-2-3 was first written for CP/M, then ported to IBM/PC

Leave it to Leif to find the obvious flaw in my argument! <grin>
If I remember correctly, it was a loooong time before Excel for Windows lost
that "It ran better on a Mac" stigma... I believe the basic premise is
valid though. What ported product has a better reputation on the 400 than
on it's "native" hardware? Does SAP sell more "reliable" 400s than Unices?
Lotus (Domino)? I haven't heard of any, and the cross platform PC ports
(Mac/Windows) generally have lesser reputations as well.

As one who has been intimately acquainted with this segment of application
development for years, this "It ran better on the (insert original platform
here)..." stigma will never go away from _ANY_ package. Why? Because the
application in question was written _TO_ (i.e., PROPRIETARY) the original
platform. Software vendors usually utilize either (or a combination of) code
translators, middleware, or CASE tools in order to port their packages to the
new platform. Code translators, though "tweakable" if customers complain
loudly enough about performance to force the vendor to do so, are the best
option yet still are hardly as good as hand written code on the native
platform and are usually written by the native platform's coders. Middleware
adds additional overhead and is often written by people that do not fully
comprehend the abilities of the target platform. CASE tools generate bloated
code regardless of the source or target.

BTW, if MAPICS and BRMS belong in the list presented earlier, I'm becoming a
Luddite. No offense to those that may have been involved in its development,
but MAPICS is the most over-engineered piece of junk ever written. If _HALF_
the effort put into determining restarts had been put into functionality, it
wouldn't have needed the darned restarts and we'd have our "Killer App"
today. MAPICS is probably best described as a "virtual interactive system".
BRMS continues to fail on a regular basis everywhere I go that actually
_needs_ it. If there's _ONE_ thing you don't want to fail...

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC USA
E-Mail: DAsmussen@aol.com

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