Re: Is this really new ?

["Evan Harris" <spanner@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Aaron

In my experience, people don't consider it bad - they consider it "not
mainstream" and therefore it's a risk from a professional point of view.

Not being mainstream means it's hard/expensive to find staff, consultants
turn their nose up at their non-preferred technology and staff have to be
trained from the ground up to use it. 

Since no mainstream consultant - including IBM - is ever going to recommend
the IBM i (it simply doesn't generate enough consulting income) as part of
any new solution, managers that have never worked with the technology won't
recommend or support it. If they are wrong they are wrong all by themselves,
and if they are right it doesn't pad out their CV sufficiently.

I don't think a GUI or anything will help until IBM decide to get behind the
machine and push it as a viable mainstream solution rather than a niche "if
you already have one" solution.

I'm not holding my breath.

Regards
Evan Harris


> The thought I have been pondering the past couple months is "what really 
> is the issue with IBM i and why do people consider it bad".  The obvious 
> answer is the look and feel.  Note that has NOTHING to do with the 
> language or DB or OS, yet shops are willing to throw all of that 
> combination away and go to .NET simply because the look and feel of the 
> UI is quite right (well, ok, it is way not right :-)  Fix the UI and we 
> have an incredibly viable machine that is second to none (a second time).