Re: The Perpetual Myth of iSeries Obsolescence

Without wanting to sound as if I am completely negative, I could not 
disagree with you more.  I am of course only looking at this from the 
perspective of our industry, and more time is wasted playing with the g-d 
forsaken mouse and clicking on buttons than anything else I have ever seen.

Whether the GUI is well designed or not is entirely beside the point, users 
like to play and with a green screen, which 90% of our business is entering 
and providing information to other employees and customers, we have far 
little of those issues and a hell of a lot more productivity.

I am asked all the time why we do not have a "windows" application, and my 
standard response is "Why?"  The overwhelming end user response is "Because 
it looks nicer". 

I am not in this for looks and trust me when I say it has nothing to do with 
functionality, it has to do with the fact there are no graphics and colorful 
screens and browsers, etc.  I am only concerned (from an application 
standpoint) with functionality and productivity and from my somewhat limited 
and focused viewpoint, 5250 gives us everything we need to accomplish our 
goals and needs.

That said, our unique position may not work for others.

Douglas


On Wed, 03 May 2006 16:49:45 +1200, Evan Harris wrote
> Hi Tom
> 
> I'm not sure I can agree with you 100% in your statement here  :)
> 
> One of the reasons a GUI (badly designed or otherwise) is perceived 
> as useful in the workplace is that most employees can these days be 
> counted on to be able to work a browser or Windows at the mechanical 
> level. Almost any person off the street will be familiar with these 
> technologies whereas the green screen is more than likely going to 
> be a mystery to them, and this becomes truer every day.
> 
> With the high personnel turnover that is seen in many environments 
> employing casual or other types of staff, having a low training 
> requirement for your everyday applications is demonstrably a money saver.
> 
> The GUI vs. green screen argument - at least in my mind - is as much 
> about having a lowest common denominator approach to data access and 
> input as it is about efficiency.
> 
> Regards
> Evan Harris
> 
> >I am not sure if I agree with this or not.  Clearly, re-engineering
> >applications solely to convert to GUI interfaces is a waste of time
> >and money, unless the UI improvements improve the application.
> >However, if it is being done to position the application for future
> >improvements, it may be a good investment.  Also, I don't think that
> >there is a whole lot of additional cost for the vehicles for a modern
> >UI.  Now Websphere is expensive, but there are alternatives.  CGIDEV2
> >is free, the incremental cost of serving .NET is pretty small, and
> >Tomcat is free.
> >
> > > I personally don't believe that there is a majority of folks out there
> > > developing to good, modern UI principles.  For every decent,
> > > productivity-improving GUI app (in my opinion) there has got to be a
> > > dozen or so mediocre collections of forms and programs developed by
> > > "programmers" without much true application design education or
> > > experience, and developed without the benefit of business analysis.
> >
> >Agreed, but irrelevant.  First, remember that developers have to walk
> >before they can run.  Second, there are as many crappy green screen
> >apps as there are crappy GUI apps. Writing off GUI development because
> >many of the apps suck is muddied thinking.
> >
> >Take care.
> >
> >--
> >Tom Jedrzejewicz
> >tomjedrz@xxxxxxxxx
> 
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