I almost agree with what you're saying here. Sure, there is a place where green-screen productivity is more important than the niceties that come along with GUI. And there are also places where procedural programming meets requirements without the added overhead of OOP. But then again, the opposite can be quite true as well. Green-screen and procedural programming don't fit well in a world where flexibility and aesthetics are as important as raw throughput. Always keep in mind that productivity means different things to different people. What's productive to someone posting thousands of payments to an A/R system every day might be outlandishly cumbersome to the sales rep trying to figure out which product line is causing his gross margins to be below what was forecast for the second half of the third quarter... Besides, I've yet to see one single thing that a green screen application can do that a GUI one can't, including optimize for data entry. The problem is more ! of "too much of a good thing". Too many software developers think that just because you have the flexibility to embed functionality anywhere, you have to add it wherever you can. Like everything else in this world, there's a happy medium somewhere that implements the best of both worlds.
-----Original Message----- From: Tony Gravagno [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 1:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [U2] IBM positioning Linux against Microsoft Whenever I propose that people take their existing apps, do some marketing, and make a go of it in the mainstream world, the conversation often turns toward "but we need more tools". People want the magic silver bullet that will make their procedural code into event-driven, their green screens into GUI, and their MV data structures into relational tables. While integration with DB2 and other technologies is a good idea, my focus is on the wealth of business rules that already exist and are fully usable right where they are. The silver bullet will never come, so people must decide if they are in business to grow, or if they only want to stay in business long enough to retire. IBM is sitting on assets (you guys and your apps) that can be posititioned now against mainstream offerings if people are actually willing to compete at the feature level rather than at the asthetic level. I understand that Joe Businessman has an average IQ of 23 but "it has to be GUI" is not a valid business position. All of us know that a green screen enables people to be much more productive than a GUI - GUI has had long enough to hang itself and to prove that "pretty" is neither fast, nor does it imply functional. MV resellers need to stop coming up with excuses why their technology won't sell and putting it on someone else to develop the "whatever it is" they need to move forward. If GUI is the only thing stopping an app from going mainstream then there are tools in our market to address that issue. I'll be happy to help people migrate their apps to GUI and integrate with GUI technologies if that's what it takes, but "GUI" cannot be the strategy, "GUI" is one tactical step among many. IBM has solid positioning for those other tactical steps that VARs need to take in order to get their apps out there. That is all I'm suggesting - that IBM should use its business strength to market and popularize MV technology and business apps, not that they should continue with years of development to make these apps look like everything else out there. This is a business initiative, not a technical one. I think Joe Businessman may be ready for that. Tony Nebula R&D ------- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.u2ug.org/listinfo/u2-users
