--------------------------------------<snip>----------------------------
I disagree.
My own experience of these applications has been different. Most do "work", in
the sense that they get some useful processing done; but this is the only favorable thing
that it occurs to me to say about them:
o In most shops more resources are devoted to routine, trivial maintenance,
accomplished ad hoc, than to either new-system development or significant
system extensions;
o They employ obsolete compile-time bound, move-orient[at]ed, synchronous
technology that pours concrete over their company's business plans;
o They are radically inflexible, full of ad hoc "design' limitations that
permit them to take cognizance of at most 4 or 7 widgets, at most 6 gidgets, and the
like;
o They have not been designed; they are radically incoherent because bits and
pieces of them have evolved in many different directions under many disparate
impeti;
o They reflect no understanding of the distinction between functional requirements and processing strategies, of the notion that requirements do not dictate implementations;
o Qua programs, they are disasters: one of the founding fathers observed long
ago that COBOL programmers could in his experience be divided into two disjoint
subsets, there were those, a moiety, who did not know what binary search was
and then there were those few who did and were pround of this arcane knowledge;
and this situation is little changed today;
o IT management is technically ill-informed, petulant, and risk-aversive.
Fatuous defense of what is will not save the platform. Nor will crackpot realism of the if-it-isn't-broken-don't-fix-it sort.
What is worse is that moving to another environment will not usually help either. The same people will replicate the same ills in it.
-------------------------------------<unsnip>---------------------------------------
That's a lot of generalizations, most of which I must strongly dispute.
I've seen a few shops that fit some of your statements, but none that
fit all. And leave us not forget: it's business needs that drive IT
technology, not the opposite.
Rick
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