On Wed, 5 Aug 2009 20:07:50 -0500, Chris Mason <[email protected]> wrote:
>... >To someone who understands the matter - see the analysis above - > "incompetence" is the only word that seems to fit. The appearance >of "incompetence" may have been forced on both the designers and >developers - in which case my abject apologies to them ... All I can say for sure is that the one person I assume was involved is not incompetent. >... >> On the TCP/IP side this is a very small group ... > >The change to the stand-alone TN3270 server took place around >the same time as this enhancement which implies somebody or >some bodies reasonably competent with TN3270 function was/were >available. And very busy creating the stand-alone Tn3270 server, I assume. > >> I suspect this is a matter of wanting to touch a house of cards as >>little as possible. > >The bulk of the work is in performing the substitution. What's >missing is the (sub)operand setting a bit which asks permission to >use system symbols with maybe a few words not dissimilar to my >analysis above concerning the care that needs to be taken. I can >a see a political process arising there because that involves the >macros - which aren't that complicated - but that's VTAM territory. My "house of cards" comment was based on hearing that as the reason for not touching other things in the Tn3270 server. I very well may not apply in this case. But (as you mentioned) changing the macros requires coordination with VTAM development and he is spread pretty thin. (Ok. That may be an exaggeration, but from what I hear it's not much of one.) >... >> Once again, ..., but I think this is a very unfortunate characterization. >>He is in no way "of inadequate intelligence". > >This was an euphemism for what I really wanted to say. ... > >If you know someone - you suggest only one - who is likely to be >involved, it would be fascinating to know the inside story. If this discussion were happening on the TCP/IP list rather than IBM-Main he might respond. (And he might say there are more people than one himself working on Tn3270. I don't know.) But I doubt he would be willing go into much behind-the-scenes detail. >Similarly, the last time I thought about it, I could come up with two >names "on the VTAM side". And I suspect one is in design, one is in development, and both are more heavily involved in Enterprise Extender (and maybe some other APPN stuff) than anything else in VTAM. That's about all I come up with, too. Since I've dropped out of SHARE and am about to drop out of my career I no longer have professional contact with them and am not going to risk the friendships by asking them about this. >... >The IBM I used to know had quality standards to set against >accounting considerations. Yes, that used to be the case. Unfortunately, things change. :-( >... >> I don't have any of the inside IBM connections that Chris has ... > >Actually my closest contact near IBM development has left in >the last few months. FSVO "left". Frome what I heard, his being laid off caused a lot of anger (and worry) in those remaining. > >In any case I'm an ex-SE. It was expected of SEs that they should >be gentle to customers and less gentle to developers[2] - it was >their job! And through SHARE I've been interacting with some of those developers as people (rather than as anonymous parts of IBM) for many years and see them in a really difficult situation now ... made a worse by the recent lay offs. Pat O'Keefe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
