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Hello folks,

My point is that being able to run old stuff unmodified can be very
bad for progress.

Running "old stuff unmodified" is a perfect expression of the old engineer's maxim, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I guess I would look at this a little differently.

The goal of IT should be to streamline business and make business more profitable.

IT professionals should be familiar with new technology, and able to use that technology when it benefits the business. (Unfortunately, far too many IT professionals in our community don't keep up with technology changes, and this results in IT holding the business back. That's very bad -- and extraordinarily common in the i community -- in fact, one might almost say "it's the norm" in the i community.)

On the other hand, the platform should be designed to make it possible to keep old software when it's still the right software for the business. So that upgrades are a BUSINESS decision, not forced by some technological technicality.

In theory, the backward-compatibility offered by the IBM i platform SHOULD be a catalyst for upgrades. After all, you can upgrade your hardware and operating system with the knowledge that your existing apps will still run. So, compatibility should not hold you back!

Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect, and these upgrades are far from as painless as they should be in theory.

Worse, what Lukas has pointed out... folks get complacent. They DON'T adopt new technology, even when it's good for the business, because they're complacent and set in their ways. How often, in this community, are old technologies kept purely because existing staff isn't familiar with the new ones? Or doesn't want to learn? Every single day -- usually several times a day -- I hear people tell me that they can't use the techniques I'm writing about because someone in their shop isn't familiar with ILE -- so nobody can use ILE. Or their not allowed to use Java for the same reason. Or things don't work because they haven't properly configured TCP/IP on their system. Over and over and over again, day in and day out I deal with this crap. This is nothing more than IT holding businesses back because people are unwilling to learn anything new.

IT should enable business, not hold it back. Change for change's sake or for technicalities are not good. But never changing and holding the business back isn't good either.

The trick is finding the right balance.

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