Re: Hmmmm.....$1 Billion

On Friday 04 March 2005 00:30, Dan Kimmel wrote:
>
> If you're going to slam OS400, at least learn what you're talking about.
>
> Dan
>
Hi,

 Very often the response to this comment flows freely from the fingertips. It 
is so simple:

Do not attack my knowledge!! If it were not for that, then I would not be 
here!

Well, sometimes the response to that could also be :

If my knowledge were better, then I would not be here!!

The impression that I have had for quite a while, regarding the AS/400, is 
that it is no longer really the system that came out in 1989 to ?. Those 
systems had demarcated 'areas' that performed certain functions. These 
functions were often explained or defined in terms of existing nomenclature. 
Batch jobs were tasks that were given a list of variables according to which 
to perform their predefined list of instructions. Interactive tasks were a 
list of instructions that would branch, depending on the variable value 
entered prior to the execution of a predetermined business rule.

What I am trying to say here is that the historic definition of interactive 
and batch have reached their 'used-by' dates.  The older software 
techinicians will recall the days when programmers would code interactive as 
if it were batch and vice versa.

Batch does not equate to backgound and neither does interactive equate to 
foreground! The information that is provided to a program to perform a 
function should effectively equate to conscious and unconscious level of 
decision-making.

 And this was also a fault of IBM's. The time had come for someone to add some 
new definitions to the industry. Yet, in order not to confuse the many that 
were going to be left behind, the industry decided to stick to names that the 
majority would remember/understand.  And this was also a fault of IBM's. 

I may be wrong.

Thanks.

Jan.