Re: Just an observation

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

"I don't know how to fix it.  I have an idea, but it would take way more 
work than any one person could do.  I just wonder whether it's worth it 
to try and create a medium where the discussion is entirely about 
business solutions.  No threads about the name of the machine, or the 
impending death of RPG, or how ILE is better/worse than .Net, or indeed 
any sort of opinion-based discussion.  Instead, just a pure, 
unadulterated focus on problems and solutions."

Joe,

Actually, I have had one of those "business solution" questions rattling 
around in my head for a few weeks but since I'd like to implement it in 
RPG and Java (and even some .Net) I am not sure where to post it.  I 
respect the collective wisdom of this list and there are some folks 
where the title "rocket scientist" would be an understatement (IMHO).  
Since I am probably at the low end of knowledge spectrum when it comes 
to programming, I am a little reticent to post.

Not sure there would be enough traffic to warrant a separate list here 
on Midrange, but with the event of EGL and other GL's of that ilk, I 
expect that good design of business processes will become more important 
than the technical elegance of the solution.

If you think of a way to build such a forum, please post.

Pete Helgren

Joe Pluta wrote:
> I remember back when I was starting out programming (back in the early 
> 40s) and how I loved learning new languages.  I started out with RPG, 
> and then learned EDL (for the Series/1) and you couldn't stop me from 
> messing around with the operating system (in the Series/1, the operating 
> system was written in the primary HLL for the box; it was very cool).  
> Next I started using assembly language and then Pascal and C.  Note that 
> I had been introduced to all these languages previously, along with 
> standard CS 101 languages like Fortran and BASIC.  But this was real 
> programming, and I ate it up.
>
> Back then, it wasn't about staking turf for a specific language or OS.  
> In fact, most programmers didn't argue about such things.  There were a 
> few uber-nerds who argued about the superiority of the Z80 instruction 
> set, or CP/M vs PC-DOS, but those were few and far between.  Not that 
> they weren't vehement; one of my favorite ongoing arguments was the 
> raging debate between Pascal and C syntax.  In Pascal, the equality 
> operator is one character ("=") and the assignment operator is two 
> (":=").  As you know, in C and its derivatives, assignment is one 
> character ("=") and equality is two ("==").  There would be screaming 
> matches about this, with the C advocates actually doing statistical 
> analysis of code to prove that there were more assignments than 
> comparisons, and thus C was more productive.
>
> Those people were considered... eccentric.  They were the guys who not 
> only actually owned their own Star Trek uniform, but considered it 
> appropriate business attire.  Meanwhile, the rest of us were just trying 
> to figure out how to get the stupid cash register to answer the modem, 
> or how to insert TTDs into a bisync data stream.
>
> Nowadays, these sorts of arguments seem to be the norm.  Rather than 
> talking about solutions, discussion forums consistently devolve into 
> arguments about syntax or the "rightness" of SQL vs. native or any of a 
> million other issues that aren't really germane to solving business 
> problems.  Thankfully David manages to keep these lists the best in the 
> Infoverse, but we're not immune.
>
> I don't know how to fix it.  I have an idea, but it would take way more 
> work than any one person could do.  I just wonder whether it's worth it 
> to try and create a medium where the discussion is entirely about 
> business solutions.  No threads about the name of the machine, or the 
> impending death of RPG, or how ILE is better/worse than .Net, or indeed 
> any sort of opinion-based discussion.  Instead, just a pure, 
> unadulterated focus on problems and solutions.
>
> Joe
>
>
>