4 ms·

True, i worked in a insurance company, the main CRM was a TUI with a Mainframe in the background, fast and reliable as hell/heaven. Then everyone (Management)

by nix23 5y ago

True, i worked in a insurance company, the main CRM was a TUI with a Mainframe in the background, fast and reliable as hell/heaven. Then everyone (Management) wanted to go away from mainframe (because it's 60's technology and expensive), so we developed a Java application with a GUI and Oracle in the background..and i was just ashamed about the whole project when it was finished. It was slower for the user, less reliable and counting the dev-cost would gave us 10years of "free" mainframe-time.

tyingq 5y ago
I had a similar experience. And it would have been simple to pay attention to tab traversal, field highlighting, key bindings, etc, to have made the new application more familiar and faster. Wasn't to be though.
sseagull 5y ago
Similar experience (as a user) at a medium-sized college. The information system (class registration, bursar, etc) could be accessed via a TUI over telnet/ssh. It was amazingly fast, and all the older professors could move around that thing fast as hell, since all the shortcuts were in muscle memory. Force-adding a student to a class could literally take <5s if they had all the numbers. Students could use it, too. And those of us who knew about it would do so, since it was so much better. Then the web frontend came out…
- megous 5y ago
  Hehe, we also had similar system in university. It was usually accessed over telnet, but in some places at the school, you could still find the real electron tube green (or orange?) text teletype terminal, where the student could sit and access just this system. It was fast in normal times, but you'd still have trouble using it when the class registrations opened, and thousands of students tried to use it at the same time.
  - toast0 5y ago
    > It was fast in normal times, but you'd still have trouble using it when the class registrations opened, and thousands of students tried to use it at the same time. Often the way these things work, the old terminals go slow (sometimes very slow) but work, and the new way times out often making it impossible to make changes, but sometimes you still can, but won't know if they worked.
habibur 5y ago
Wanted to hear this. This had been my experience too. But no one on the net seem to talk about it. It was always "we are stuck with mainframe due to politics..." But this isn't about mainframe vs Java. I have a feeling it's about Terminal user interface vs GUI. A modern terminal app, will be just as much fast as those old mainframe apps, is my feeling.
- mrighele 5y ago
  I don't think it is exactly TUI vs GUI, but more keyboard-first vs mouse-first, i.e. how you interact with it. Granted, Desktop GUI are usually developed mouse-first, but it doesn't have to be that way: if you take windows 98 / windows 2000, you could get everything done more efficiently with a keyboard than with a mouse. Just think about the difference between an app developed specifically for the desktop (mouse) or for mobile (touch): same GUI but completely different programs and experience
  - habibur 5y ago
    Right. Plus responsiveness. Terminal apps have faster response time than GUIs. And when someone is typing like 10 chars per seconds it matters. The usecase is different between terminal vs GUI. Where in GUI you look - choose - decide and click. And in terminal you blindly storm on the keyboard as fast as you can.
    - eitland 5y ago
      > The usecase is different between terminal vs GUI. Where in GUI you look - choose - decide and click. And in terminal you blindly storm on the keyboard as fast as you can. Actually I think it is more nuanced than that. Some GUI programs are well optimized for fast keyboard only usage even if you can use point and click. NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ, Sublime Text and VS Code are on top of my mind but even some old web applications used to be quite usable I think.
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      Terminal apps are running under a GUI terminal for at least two decades now, there isn't really a reason for a GUI application to not be as responsive as a terminal application, it is just that "modern" GUI toolkits being slow. IMO a reason is because nobody seems to bat an eye when faced with a "TUI" made out of lines, boxes and garish colors but if a GUI is made like that it is suddenly ugly so toolkit developers put a ton of effort into shiny looks. But try a GUI made with Win32, Motif, Tk (not Ttk) or even Gtk1 and it'll be as responsive as any terminal application (of course it also depends on the application, there isn't much the GUI can do if the application abuses it or is sluggish for other reasons ).
wiz21c 5y ago
I did such a migration. End results : - user security massively increased (they need hardware tokens) - user management is now part of a globalized management system where control access are much stricter than (let's call the dev to add somebody) - it is muuuch easier to find new Java devs; development is now shared between the company (for business knowledge) and another company for the development, diminishing the train factor by a huge amount. - code has been modernized and so is much more easy to audit - SQL database can be queried by armies of cheap data analysis tools - some of the consultants have now much less power to negotiate their salary (less than they were only 3 managing the application :-) ) That were for the positives. Negattives: - Java UI needs much more time to get polished or much better dev's. - Security is now much more administrative. Gone the days of the quick fix in production. - hardware token for security is not vey well handled, incurring a heavy toll on data access (a limitation of our security token, which was unfortunately not seen during project planning) - we had to reproduce all the TUI shortcuts for people to stay productive. Yes, you read that correctly :-)
- nix23 5y ago
  It sounds you had a much bigger budget than we had ;) BTW, the Mainframe had a sql-database (DB2) and was attached to Active-Directory already, the Reports/Print-jobs where send to a Linux Machine, it was actively maintained and not some old crusty 70's System.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    The only sad part here is that you didn’t get your own 3278 with beam spring keyboard ;-) People often equate a later fad with “modernisation” when a well architected app can be easy to manage even if written in COBOL and running under CICS. If a person can learn Java, they can learn to read COBOL.
    - nix23 5y ago
      >The only sad part here is that you didn’t get your own 3278 with beam spring keyboard ;-) Hey! I have my beloved HHKB Professional 2 since years :-) >If a person can learn Java, they can learn to read COBOL. Well...well yes! That's true especially the modern one's.

by nix23 5y ago

tyingq 5y ago

I had a similar experience. And it would have been simple to pay attention to tab traversal, field highlighting, key bindings, etc, to have made the new application more familiar and faster. Wasn't to be though.

sseagull 5y ago

Similar experience (as a user) at a medium-sized college. The information system (class registration, bursar, etc) could be accessed via a TUI over telnet/ssh. It was amazingly fast, and all the older professors could move around that thing fast as hell, since all the shortcuts were in muscle memory. Force-adding a student to a class could literally take <5s if they had all the numbers. Students could use it, too. And those of us who knew about it would do so, since it was so much better. Then the web frontend came out…

megous 5y ago
Hehe, we also had similar system in university. It was usually accessed over telnet, but in some places at the school, you could still find the real electron tube green (or orange?) text teletype terminal, where the student could sit and access just this system. It was fast in normal times, but you'd still have trouble using it when the class registrations opened, and thousands of students tried to use it at the same time.
- toast0 5y ago
  > It was fast in normal times, but you'd still have trouble using it when the class registrations opened, and thousands of students tried to use it at the same time. Often the way these things work, the old terminals go slow (sometimes very slow) but work, and the new way times out often making it impossible to make changes, but sometimes you still can, but won't know if they worked.

habibur 5y ago

Wanted to hear this. This had been my experience too. But no one on the net seem to talk about it. It was always "we are stuck with mainframe due to politics..." But this isn't about mainframe vs Java. I have a feeling it's about Terminal user interface vs GUI. A modern terminal app, will be just as much fast as those old mainframe apps, is my feeling.

mrighele 5y ago
I don't think it is exactly TUI vs GUI, but more keyboard-first vs mouse-first, i.e. how you interact with it. Granted, Desktop GUI are usually developed mouse-first, but it doesn't have to be that way: if you take windows 98 / windows 2000, you could get everything done more efficiently with a keyboard than with a mouse. Just think about the difference between an app developed specifically for the desktop (mouse) or for mobile (touch): same GUI but completely different programs and experience
- habibur 5y ago
  Right. Plus responsiveness. Terminal apps have faster response time than GUIs. And when someone is typing like 10 chars per seconds it matters. The usecase is different between terminal vs GUI. Where in GUI you look - choose - decide and click. And in terminal you blindly storm on the keyboard as fast as you can.
  - eitland 5y ago
    > The usecase is different between terminal vs GUI. Where in GUI you look - choose - decide and click. And in terminal you blindly storm on the keyboard as fast as you can. Actually I think it is more nuanced than that. Some GUI programs are well optimized for fast keyboard only usage even if you can use point and click. NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ, Sublime Text and VS Code are on top of my mind but even some old web applications used to be quite usable I think.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Terminal apps are running under a GUI terminal for at least two decades now, there isn't really a reason for a GUI application to not be as responsive as a terminal application, it is just that "modern" GUI toolkits being slow. IMO a reason is because nobody seems to bat an eye when faced with a "TUI" made out of lines, boxes and garish colors but if a GUI is made like that it is suddenly ugly so toolkit developers put a ton of effort into shiny looks. But try a GUI made with Win32, Motif, Tk (not Ttk) or even Gtk1 and it'll be as responsive as any terminal application (of course it also depends on the application, there isn't much the GUI can do if the application abuses it or is sluggish for other reasons ).

wiz21c 5y ago

I did such a migration. End results : - user security massively increased (they need hardware tokens) - user management is now part of a globalized management system where control access are much stricter than (let's call the dev to add somebody) - it is muuuch easier to find new Java devs; development is now shared between the company (for business knowledge) and another company for the development, diminishing the train factor by a huge amount. - code has been modernized and so is much more easy to audit - SQL database can be queried by armies of cheap data analysis tools - some of the consultants have now much less power to negotiate their salary (less than they were only 3 managing the application :-) ) That were for the positives. Negattives: - Java UI needs much more time to get polished or much better dev's. - Security is now much more administrative. Gone the days of the quick fix in production. - hardware token for security is not vey well handled, incurring a heavy toll on data access (a limitation of our security token, which was unfortunately not seen during project planning) - we had to reproduce all the TUI shortcuts for people to stay productive. Yes, you read that correctly :-)

nix23 5y ago
It sounds you had a much bigger budget than we had ;) BTW, the Mainframe had a sql-database (DB2) and was attached to Active-Directory already, the Reports/Print-jobs where send to a Linux Machine, it was actively maintained and not some old crusty 70's System.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  The only sad part here is that you didn’t get your own 3278 with beam spring keyboard ;-) People often equate a later fad with “modernisation” when a well architected app can be easy to manage even if written in COBOL and running under CICS. If a person can learn Java, they can learn to read COBOL.
  - nix23 5y ago
    >The only sad part here is that you didn’t get your own 3278 with beam spring keyboard ;-) Hey! I have my beloved HHKB Professional 2 since years :-) >If a person can learn Java, they can learn to read COBOL. Well...well yes! That's true especially the modern one's.