On 28 Jun 2007 07:52:28 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote: >Any experienced mainframe software developer will confirm that the >amount of "baggage" being carried around in commercial software products >to accommodate old technology is staggering. Being constantly pulled in >two directions, with one set of customers demanding exploitation of new >hardware/software features and the other set of customers still running >really old stuff, you start to look and feel like a piece of salt-water >taffy ... and so does the code.
I truly believe that some of the attraction to businesses in moving away from mainframes is the same attraction that someone with a filled up garage has to moving to a new house. When we buy a new personal computer, it is possible to clone the old one to the new one - but we seem to copy old problems over as well. Starting over is cleaner. When Apple redesigned their core operating system, they were able to get rid of many problems - including security problems. Microsoft chose to try to be more backward compatible - which means their security fixes are more like patches instead of design. IBM has had mainframes with multiple operating systems for some time. But it isn't common for us to use these as an opportunity to start over with a redesign of our IS from scratch. So we force ourselves to do so by buying incompatible computers. That's our stupidity - but IBM could do a better job marketing a smarter solution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
