Mr Siegel and I often disagree. His substantial agreement with one of my positions would indeed cause me to reconsider it.
His comment <begin extract> t has been my experience that inhouse developed software will not be converted for technology only reasons. There must be a good solid business case to justify this type of project. </end extract> is a predictable, stereotyped response to my post. It is nevertheless of some exemplary interest as a textbook example of what C Wright Mills called crackpot realism. I have much, too much, experience with these AMODE(24) programs that "run important business applications just fine". To their users they have the drab look and feel of circa-1960 applications; their maintenance costs are such that the shops that use them devote more than half of their IT budgets to just keeping them running; experience with them contributes largely to the common view that the mainframe is an obsolete platform. They seldom exhibit an explicit design. Instead they have grown ad hoc over many years. They use obsolete compile-time bound, move-orient[at]ed, synchronous programming technology. Etc., etc. The litany is long and damning. They are, in a word, technologically indefensible; and many of them were so when they first came into use. What amuses me, if that is the right word, is that it is just these people who are working the destruction of the milieux they cherish. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
