Re: Moving from Green screen app to GUI because of push back

I understand this sentiment and for a while agreed.  Then I decided to see just what could be done with the iSeries with freely available tools and current baseline technologies.  That exercise changed my mind.  Put it another way: what can programmers everywhere do today on other cross-platform applications that they can not do on the iSeries?  If we remove ourselves from the Microsoft & Apple platform, are we stuck? Is there enough good stuff out there that we can function just fine without Word & Excel?



On 12/12/2017 9:39 PM, mlazarus wrote:

Tim,

 I was discussing this subject recently with a very respected member of this group.  We were both confused how turning over a crucial, and I do mean crucial to the longevity of the system, piece of creating a modern UI is turned over to third party vendors instead of being fully integrated and included in the OS.

 Some vendors have done an admirable job creating a product, but IMHO, it's ridiculous to have to pay a large bundle extra to get what should be included and easily integrated into the system.  It is also more expensive to develop using (at least) some of these tools.  My estimate is at least 25% longer to develop and test.

  I have three clients that are jumping ship to a PC based platform, another that has already gone in that direction (they used to have the largest AS/400 config in the US northeast (which included 14 AS/400's) and another is in the midst of moving part of their operation to a PC based cloud system.  I haven't heard of a new member to the midrange fold in a long time.  I would imagine that they exist, but I think that 20+ years after the GUI became popular, for IBM not to include this required functionality, plus the GUI development tools as part of the base OS, is just plain foolish.

 No offense to the tool vendors, but I believe that this functionality is best integrated at a low level in the OS, not as a generic API in order to get the best integration, debugging and performance.

 -mark