RE: Hmmmm.....$1 Billion

["Wilt, Charles" <CWilt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
> Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 9:53 AM
> To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
> Subject: RE: Hmmmm.....$1 Billion
> 
> 
> > From: Steve Richter
> > 
> > as I understand it, the reason interactive jobs dont
> > allow threads is because the underlying OS400 code is too 
> buggy to be
> > made threadsafe.
> 
> What exactly do you mean by buggy?  There are actual faults 
> in the code
> today?  Or there are design issues that prevent making the code
> threadsafe?  (These are two completely different things, by the way.)
> Furthermore, who told you this?  Someone who worked on the 
> code?  Or is
> currently working on the code?  Have you actually seen ANY of 
> this first
> hand?  Have you written programs that fail?  Have you 
> submitted PMRs to
> address specific issues?  
> 
> Or are you just repeating whatever you might have heard second-hand?
> (We call this the Dan Rather school of journalism.)
> 
> Joe
> 

It's not buggy, was a simple cost vs. benefit design decision according to 
Patrick Botz, 

"The reason interactive jobs were not enabled to support multi-threaded 
applications is that large pieces of the internal OS which they use are not 
capable of handling multiple threads.  The cost to multi-thread enable the 
whole system was huge.  Therefore the decision was made (way back when this was 
originally done) to support multiple threads in those environments that did not 
require an entire rewrite of major portions of the internals of the OS." 

in the thread Steve started about this back in February:
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200502/msg00626.html


Nor is the original lack of threads a bug.

Steve, get over it! If you want to provide such fancy UI's to your users, don't 
try doing it in 5250. Simple as that.

I'd much prefer IBM spend money on enhancements more than one person sees a 
need for.


Charles