----- Original Message ----- From: "john gilmore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 10:57 AM Subject: Re: latest Principles of Operation
> > > > Views like his are common, but they are also curiously parochial. Someone > who wants to do physics is expected to master the necessary techniques, and > if he cannot it is politely but firmly made clear to him that he must do > something else. I think you may have missed my point. > > With programmers, on the other hand, we too often proceed very differently. > Statement-level procedural languages like COBOL are frequently subsetted, > the use of notionally "difficult" language features being interdicted as > "too complex" in many shops. It would be much better to interdict > professional programming to anyone who cannot master all of the features of > any of these SLPLs. Obviously you want people to master the skills necessary to perform an excellent job. However, if the skills required become more and more difficult you will eliminate more and more people who can, or will, engage in that activity. At some point only a very, very few will do it. Is that what we desire - to have fewer and fewer people able to perform the task, so that it gets too expensive for companies to pay for the expertise - and move to a platform that is cheaper, even if not quite as good? There seems to be a disconnect between cause and effect on the use of various tools to get a job done by companies whose number one priority is cutting costs and increasing revenues. C is popular and assembler is not for a reason. x86 based platforms are popular and mainframes are not for a reason. It is easy to point to unit cost, but unit cost is a function of how widespread something is used, and how widespread something is used is a function of how easy it is to use. The original issue I responded to was with regard to the number of instructions one must be familiar with to be competent in mainframe assembler (which, of course, isn't the only issue as there are numerous macros and services to know as well), and the statement that complexity is used as an excuse for poor training and laziness. I was just pointing out that this is not necessarily the case. Complexity is a real concern if you care about how many people are willing to use a particular thing. My conclusion, then, would be that adding complexity to mainframes is probably not what most of those of us in the business really want - having nothing at all to do with laziness. Regards, Dean > > John Gilmore > Ashland, MA 01721-1817 > USA > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
