Re: Looking for like-minded programmers who use the enhanced features of 5250

I have to agree with John about a background. Before my life in IT, I worked
in the production world as an end user. I think my experience as an end user
makes me a better programmer.

At a previous employment (early 2000's), our HR director was complaining
about the "ancient dos" screens and wanted something "more modern" for our
payroll/HR application. She found an iSeries based (as it was known at the
time) HR/Payroll application with a GUI option. A group of us
(HR/Payroll/IT) visited a company that was using this application. She came
out of the demo complaining about how many time they had to "keyboard to
mouse, mouse to keyboard" to perform data entry.

My personal experience is that most GUI based data entry screens are poorly
designed. It is tough to beat a plain text screen for data entry. Yes, GUI
looks pretty and may be good for reviewing reports and inquiry. Instead of
an all or nothing between text based and GUI based, I think we need a
balance of text based for head down hard core data entry and GUI for inquiry
and reporting.

Regards,

Jim Hawkins
Programmer Analyst
Interkal LLC
Kalamazoo, MI
269.978.2252

-----Original Message-----

date: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 23:02:08 -0500
from: John McKee <jmmckee3@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: Looking for like-minded programmers who use the enhanced
features of 5250

Paul Harvey left several thoughts on my mind over the yeara. I think the
one I remember best si "Not all that we call progress is progress". Seems
like that concept has been forgotten. I had a job 40 some years ago where
correction entries were performed via keypunch. The people who wrote the
code did not work with the keypunch design. One field contained a left
justified numeric field. So, couldn't use the limited capability of the
keypunch on that one field. Doesn't take any time at all to learn just how
quickly a card was now trash. If the people who wrote the code had actually
had to enter some data, they might have redesigned the process..
I remember hearing the best way to become a god programmer (at that time)
was to start as a computer operator. Really helps to understand the entire
process.

John