RE: What should I say to a *nix community?

Ok, I have tried to stay out of this, but now ....

Lukas said "
If i had a choice, i would prefer heaving a head on crash with a
current car - not a with a 20 year old car - even if it is in pristine
condition and works just as well. Why? Because technology advanced in
those 20 years."

The fallacy that newer is better is sticking its head out.

Surviving a head on crash in today's vehicle does not have the same
"survivability" rate in comparison to the 20-year-old car.

In some cases, the 20 year-old car will have better chances than the
current vehicle. For example steel block versus aluminum blocks or
plastic doors vs steel doors, or heaven forbid the new "fabric" frames
coming out on the new "tech" cars.

On the other hand, there have been advances in gas tank design that
would make the current version better.

The same holds true for software development.

It is simply a "ROI" question. Is the effort you expend to bring
something current without any "change in functionality" worth it? IMO,
the probability of adding new problems to the mix with unforeseen errors
and functionality changes outweighs the perceived need to be current.

Why change something just to change it if it works without intervention?
IMO you are spending money on things that will not improve the bottom
line. This is one reason why IT is considered an "expense" center and
not a "revenue" center.





Sharon

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 1:45 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: What should I say to a *nix community?

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 8:18 PM, Jeff Crosby <jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

When the AS/400 went from 48-bit to 64-bit, did you have to rewrite

your

code? Yet with a little learning over time, you could take advantage

of

all the new bells and whistles.

In both cases the complexities were hidden from the "end user".

You're right. Again, i'm not saying IBM should drop this backward
compatibility. It's a great engineering feat. But i already said that.

The problem, as always, is when it gets abused by people who don't
want to learn anything new. The numbers of people with this attitude
are low on this list, mostly because those people have no interesting
in keeping up with the technology. Yet they're there, and i have to
deal with them from time to time.

In IT, it is important to take advantage of new technology. In every
facet. That doesn't mean you have to migrate to V6R1 a day after
GA.But it means that you start testing V6R1, and upgrade - take
control.

I've seen far to many customers that staid behind many releases -
because it was working. And then they got a problem, some
unexplainable behaviour. A new printer that wasn't supported by HPT -
a compiler errored out when it shouldn't. Some SQL feature not
working. Usually not a big problem - just call up IBM, and most of the
time the problem gets resolved quickly. But not when you're running
V4R2.

There are other problems - some new improvement in a program, and then
it crashed, leaving half-written records empty in the database. Why?
Because they didn't modernize their application to use transactions
and constraints. Now, IBM added all those features. Programmers can
use them. But many don't. Why? Because it worked so far.

Data entry is slowly but surely away. There's EDI and other ways to
directly transmit data from company to company. Does that mean that
there is no data entry today? Of course not.

In the end, IT is defined by the people that drive it. There are
thousands of piss-poor ERP applications out there - all of them
running on Windows. But there are also many piss-poor ERP applications
on the i. Why? Because the people behind them suck.

You can program great applications on the i - you can use great
procedures to ensure quality of the application and consistency of
data - but you actually have to do something to get that. If one just
continues to run a program they developed 25 years ago, well, then
they're stuck with their old crap - that is no longer up to speed.

If i had a choice, i would prefer heaving a head on crash with a
current car - not a with a 20 year old car - even if it is in pristine
condition and works just as well. Why? Because technology advanced in
those 20 years.