#A500 shipping????
11 messages in this thread
Marc,
A lot of corporations are moving away from IBM standards and onto UNIX
(tm) standards….and the Amiga is perfectly suited for this.
Don
No offense Don, but the only people who believe that Unix will ever be the
standard in corporate computing are those who learned to do development in a
research or a university environment. Even at AT&T (who I worked for for 3
years and who created UNIX) TSO/ISPF and CMS reign supreme and wi
ll continue to do so because of UNIX's inherently unfriendly command structure.
I know that a shell can be placed around it, but so what. TSO/ISPF is the
workbench manager under MVS and CMS will continue to serve the same function in
DOS. Of course, this is only in the IBM environment. But so much time and money
and outstanding code exists in these environments that UNIX will never make
much headway there.
Regards,
Marc Baime
Marc,
I beg to differ. As a person who has no idea what MVS, CMS, TSO/ISPF are, I
was introduced to UNIX on an AT&T 7300 micro and I am still awed by the power
and complexities of it. I find the windowing shell program clumsy in places
but overall decently implemented. Then with 300+ utility files out there,
allowing me to do whatever I want, whenever I have a problem that can't be
handled through the shell I can access UNIX directly in another window. I am
by no means evenm close to knowing what all of the commands under UNIX are, but
when I need to do something I have online help and huge manuals to help me find
what I need. And there is invariably a solution at my disposal that was
already written by somebody else who needed to do a similar thing.
How many corporate groups of users do you know that don't have one or more
'guru's' that are there for other folks' questions regarding the computers they
are using. With a pleasant shell, UNIX can be friendly and I have never seen a
more powerful OS.
-John
John,
In IBM oriented shops there are seldom people who could be classed as GURUs,
at least not in the same sense as you are likely to find in a Unix environment.
Most IBM shops think a GURU is someone who can actually write JCL and use
anything more complex than PROFS. This is a generality of course, but tends to
be true in small to medium installations.
Regards, Larry.
;;S_AMIG: – Job 49: hello john. perry here. going to bed now t
Larry,
I must disagree. I have met more than a few GURUS in IBM shops. These were not
guys who spent their time trying to save 5 bytes of code in an object file.
These were guys who could take a tremendous amount of data and in a short
period of time normalize it and create a beautiful logical data base design.
Then they'd go to their terminals and in a couple of days have a physical
implementation. Then there are guys who could spend a few days with a user and
produce, first a logical structured design and then a physical implementation
of a complex but necessary user application. In addition I have known plenty of
bit twiddlers who could whip together assembler subroutine libraries or patch
in exits to IBM routines to perform all types of functions. On the other hand,
I am sure you find plenty of goofoffs in UNIX shops. I certainly met my share
at AT&T.
Marc Baime
Marc,
I did generalize, and admitted it. I stand by my comments about small to
medium sized shops, primarily because my idea of what constitutes a GURU is
somewhat different than yours.
Regards, Larry.
Having worked at AT&T for 3 years I can tell you that the 7300 is one of the
biggest money losing items the company has ever had and anyone working in the
corporate mainframe environment (the predominant environment for corporations)
using IBM equipment will tell you that UNIX has a small, devout following but
that TSO/ISPF and/or CMS is the environment they work in. There is not much
chance that the UNIX environment will ever find a happy home in corporate
America.
Marc, Yes, the 7300/3B1 family has never been one of our hotter moving units.
Marc, I'm afraid I really don't know enough to about the mainframe corporate
environment to dispute your claims so I will just let it be.
However, I do think you will be proved wrong in coming times. UNIX in my eyes
looks fantastic, and at least is a big threat to os/2 in the small business
connectivity end of micros.
-John
Marc,
It's been so long (over 20 years) since I did anything with an IBM
mainframe–that I couldn't make a comparison; however, folks who are familiar
with both, say that doing something under UNIX such as hardware modifications,
software additions, etc. is a breeze compared to doing the same thing with an
IBM.
Again, I can't compare the user interface, but while UNIX and it's
various shells may be cryptic to some, to users in general–they never see the
shell or the UNIX prompt, but merely run application programs that are
auto-started via logon scripts and menu's.
From a programmer's point of view (again from folks who know both
systems) UNIX is also much easier to develop under. From my point of view, I'd
have to agree that writing programs under UNIX is not at all difficult.
Most businesses that have huge amounts of time and money invested in
IBM equipment will more than likely stay with IBM for cost considerations
alone; however, where I work (Denver Police) we are pulling everything OFF of
the IBM mainframes and moving it onto AT&T 3B2's (400's and 600's) and once
done, will show a savings of over 2 million dollars a year. The savings alone
is paying for the new equipment and development costs. It is going to take a
year or 2 to get everything thru both the initial developement cycle and the
2nd pass, but even the first pass stuff is far more flexible from our
standpoint…and much easier to change based on user requests.
Obviously some folks would disagree with this for one reason or
another, but the folks who made the decision to convert our system came to the
conclusion that we'd be crazy not to do it.
Don
Don,
Most people who work in the UNIX environment as programmers would agree
with you that the UNIX environment is the best for programmers. My point is not
that the TSO/ISPF or CMS environments are necessarily better, just that they
are here to stay. IBM's new DB2/SQL database development will be done in the
TSO/ISPF, CICS, and IMS DC environment on mainframes and this will be the
database interface offered with the advanced version of OS2 on IBM's new micros
(with windows and presentation manager like stuff possibly moving up to the
mainframe). Again having worked for AT&T for several years I'm familiar with
the 3B2 machines and, while nice, have been big losers for the company. I think
the IBM corporate environment will prevail in most sitiations. As for you I
hope you find the 3B2's to be a good environment for your applications and
programming work.
Marc Baime
Marc,
While IBM is _just_ getting around to making DB2/SQL available to
users, we've been using ORACLE/SQL (next step up the ladder in implementations
of SQL) on the 3B2's and PC's for over a year.
I do agree that IBM equipment isn't going to fade away and that it will
a major force in the marketplace for quite some time to come….but the
interface to mainframs offered by OS/2 and the architecture certainly isn't
anything new to us.
The 3B2's are starting to sell much better now, and with the 600 model,
it's into the 5-10 MIPS range…which is plenty of speed for most applications.
The 400 is still down in the 1-2 MIPS range…but improvements are comming
there also.
In any event, while I don't see the IBM environment going away, I do
see UNIX comming into it's own in the next few years.
Don