Re: Costco still on IBM i?

Hi Marco,

Am 25.05.2025 um 03:07 schrieb Marco Facchinetti <marco.facchinetti@xxxxxxxxx>:

Daniel, once again: I wrote a ton of "display file - program" but nobody will ever buy that model again.

That's true from your personal perspective as an ISV and consultant. In fact, it would be very hard / impossible today, to sell a customer a new application package with a 5250 user interface.

But this has nothing to do with an "superior programming model" - web UIs are just shiny and new and have a lot of bling. And in some cases really add value.

But the reality in small and medium businesses is, that they have invested a lot into their code bases over time - and they don't just throw that away, because someone say, it's "bad technology". Other than big enterprises, the SMBs don't jump on every train.

The company I work for (logistics and transportation) has a core application from the early 1990s - of course green screen. But that doesn't hurt, because the average user, never sees it, as our web development team created specific UIs for many user centric tasks that communicate with our code modules.

But when it came to a new business process (processing incoming invoices vs. internal pre-calculation) the stakeholders wanted us to create a new 5250 application. In fact the ladies who have to work with it, liked it better - and asked for it. This wasn't my decision - is even was made, before I entered the company - and maybe I wouldn't have made that decision - but now it's like that.

So again - from the perspective of an ISV / consultant it's clear, that you don't develop new software based on 5250. But from the perspective of an internal developer or freelancer - not working for an ISV - it's not so clear, as you have to deal with what is on hand.

Kind regards,
Daniel

P.S.: I've only seen the screenshots of "Galileo" at your website - doesn't look mediocre - and I think Patrik didn't reference to you application. But there are a lot of bad web GUIs out there - I have seen a lot in the last 20 years - and I have seen a lot of good, bad and ugly 5250 screens too.