RE: Development ideas -- MIDRANGE-L

<ahem>, gentle listers, as a newbie to the iseries, but not the industry,
I'd like to humbly offer that this 'abacus' idea has more merit than we'd
all care to believe...because it offers a solution that's rock solid, has
worked correctly and flawlessly since it's inception, is scalable, is EASILY
UNDERSTOOD, and can still be used today and for the foreseeable future to do
exactly what it was designed to do.

We, as a collective industry, tend to forget that we are here to solve
business problems, not to prove that we can use/adapt to new technologies!
As I look about the industry, I see a regretful turn of events occurring:
The vast amounts of wisdom gained by the 'elders' of the DP world is being
cast aside in favor of implementing the latest language/concept/DB/etc.!
Let me explain:  Look back at some of the first systems/programs/solutions
that you first designed and worked on, and remind yourself how many times
you've wished you could do it/them over with the KNOWLEDGE you now have...of
both the tools you used *and* the problem that was to be solved. We learned,
through hard knocks, that a GOTO is ok if used judiciously, and that data
replication across files is not a sin when it allows you to reduce OLTP I/O.
Yes, folks, history is repeating itself... just as we did 25 years (or more)
ago....our wonderful young folks are setting about trying to understand the
problem to be solved, and trying to solve it with the newly developed tools
that they just scarcely learned a short time earlier in a confined academic
environment (no offence to the young and ambitious...I applaud you).  Does
this scenario sound familiar?

I say to us all...'Let's not pave the cow path'.  It is our responsibility
as the elders to mentor our enthusiastic young folks that the issue is to
solve our employer's problems, not prove/disprove a technology.  JAVA, C,
VB, etc. are wonderful tools, but like COBOL,  RPG, and FORTRAN, they have
their place.  Let us first decide what we want to accomplish, then let's
understand what technologies do what well, and *then* we can set about
writing code...you, me, and all the fantastic young minds too!!

In closing, I'd like to apologize for my less than stellar literary skills,
and hope that my point has come across effectively and without malice....we
need to be able to both realize and accept that sometimes, the abacus is the
best solution.   :-)




Ray Shahan

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans", John Lennon

> -----Original Message-----
> From: alan shore [SMTP:SHOREA@dime.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 9:25 AM
> To:   midrange-l@midrange.com
> Subject:      Re: Development ideas
>
> Wait a minute, where did I put my abacus
>
>
>