4 ms·

Systems got orders of magnitude more complicated, time to release got orders of magniture shorter, and everything got a whole hell of a lot better.

btilly 17y ago
I agree with 2 of your points, but the third makes me wonder whether you work in the same industry that I do.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  Would you rather be working with a green-screen terminal hooked up to a mainframe, or a modern computer hooked up to the Internet?
  - eru 17y ago
    Agreed. (Though I still have my terminal set to green-on-black.)
  - omouse 17y ago
    You forgot the third choice: using pen and paper. I'll take the pen+paper and the occassional green-screen.
  - meatbag 17y ago
    Can I get a green-screen terminal hooked up to the Internet?
    - Kadin 17y ago
      If by "green screen" you mean 3270 terminal, then ... yes, but it would be pretty hard. The networking hardware for a 3270 is pretty expensive. (I was going to say "getting pretty expensive," but in reality SNA has always been expensive; it's just that other networking hardware has gotten dirt cheap by comparison.) And, of course, you need some sort of actual backend computer to attach the terminal to. But sure, if you had a terminal, a spare IBM system (the iSeries is probably the lowest end) set up to support SNA, and then a networking controller to attach the 3270 to, you could probably get Lynx working. Alternately, if you just want the effect, you could just pick up an old green/black monochrome display and hook it up (via a physical adapter) to any VGA card. Buggy implementations excepted, all VGA cards should be backwards-compatible to MGA. Add a nice IBM Model M keyboard and you'd be all set. I suspect someone has probably done this as a case mod before (if not ... I might); stick a modern mobo in an old IBM PC case with the original monitor and keyboard.
    - olefoo 17y ago
      Yes. Find any of a number of old-school serial terminals, attach to the serial port on a PC running linux, voila! http://vt100.net/ http://vt100.net/
  - agravier 17y ago
    Did you try both? Can you work better on your internet-hooked box?
  - Kadin 17y ago
    Depends on the job. I've seen some very unfortunate PC deployments (most in the 90s) that axed perfectly good 3270-based systems in favor of clunky, crash-prone, button-and-wizard GUIs that were so bad, employees had to go back to paper-based workflows to get their jobs done. Terminal-based systems often have a very steep learning curve, but I've seen many cases where they were better designed and met business needs better than COTS replacements. Granted, those terminal-based systems were probably phenomenally expensive when they were put in (mostly in the 70s or early 80s, that I saw), and I suppose it's possible that after 15-20 years we have a biased sample that only represents the best of the breed, but they got the job done.
- tlb 17y ago
  Would you rather be working in 360 assembler or FORTRAN66 to Python/Ruby/Javascript?
  - btilly 17y ago
    As long as the problems are matched to the capabilities of the language, I don't actually care about what the language and capabilities are. I judge how good things are by the human element. That hasn't changed. The software industry is as inclined as always to engage in death marches, shortchange quality, seek imaginary silver bullets, and devalue experience. In short it isn't fundamentally different at all.
raheemm 17y ago
You could make the same arguments in every industry that exists, somehow software is the only one that gets away with it. Even our counterparts in hardware are held to a higher standard. Djikstra and Hoare are the only ones who tried to advance a higher standard and yet beyond naming an award for one and singing praises of the other, the field has continued to accept lesser standards.
- tlb 17y ago
  Desktop computers have tens of millions of lines of active software, and for most users they only exhibit a bug every week or so. By any measure, that level of reliability far exceeds any other industry. Chipmakers achieve 0.999999 reliability, which is impressive, but if software had only that level of reliability it would crash every millisecond.
  - raheemm 17y ago
    Setting aside all other factors (complexity, progress made, resources available, etc), I would argue that the culture of bug acceptance has lead to more bugs in software than would have existed had it been less tolerant.
    - astine 17y ago
      It has also lead to more software than would exist otherwise.
      - nvoorhies 17y ago
        And software that's orders of magnitude cheaper than it would be if error free.
  - nvoorhies 17y ago
    I'm trying to puzzle out the logic behind chipmakers' products being less reliable than the software that runs on them. Does the weakest link in the chain not break first?

btilly 17y ago

I agree with 2 of your points, but the third makes me wonder whether you work in the same industry that I do.

nostrademons 17y ago
Would you rather be working with a green-screen terminal hooked up to a mainframe, or a modern computer hooked up to the Internet?
- eru 17y ago
  Agreed. (Though I still have my terminal set to green-on-black.)
- omouse 17y ago
  You forgot the third choice: using pen and paper. I'll take the pen+paper and the occassional green-screen.
- meatbag 17y ago
  Can I get a green-screen terminal hooked up to the Internet?
  - Kadin 17y ago
    If by "green screen" you mean 3270 terminal, then ... yes, but it would be pretty hard. The networking hardware for a 3270 is pretty expensive. (I was going to say "getting pretty expensive," but in reality SNA has always been expensive; it's just that other networking hardware has gotten dirt cheap by comparison.) And, of course, you need some sort of actual backend computer to attach the terminal to. But sure, if you had a terminal, a spare IBM system (the iSeries is probably the lowest end) set up to support SNA, and then a networking controller to attach the 3270 to, you could probably get Lynx working. Alternately, if you just want the effect, you could just pick up an old green/black monochrome display and hook it up (via a physical adapter) to any VGA card. Buggy implementations excepted, all VGA cards should be backwards-compatible to MGA. Add a nice IBM Model M keyboard and you'd be all set. I suspect someone has probably done this as a case mod before (if not ... I might); stick a modern mobo in an old IBM PC case with the original monitor and keyboard.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    Yes. Find any of a number of old-school serial terminals, attach to the serial port on a PC running linux, voila! http://vt100.net/ http://vt100.net/
- agravier 17y ago
  Did you try both? Can you work better on your internet-hooked box?
- Kadin 17y ago
  Depends on the job. I've seen some very unfortunate PC deployments (most in the 90s) that axed perfectly good 3270-based systems in favor of clunky, crash-prone, button-and-wizard GUIs that were so bad, employees had to go back to paper-based workflows to get their jobs done. Terminal-based systems often have a very steep learning curve, but I've seen many cases where they were better designed and met business needs better than COTS replacements. Granted, those terminal-based systems were probably phenomenally expensive when they were put in (mostly in the 70s or early 80s, that I saw), and I suppose it's possible that after 15-20 years we have a biased sample that only represents the best of the breed, but they got the job done.
tlb 17y ago
Would you rather be working in 360 assembler or FORTRAN66 to Python/Ruby/Javascript?
- btilly 17y ago
  As long as the problems are matched to the capabilities of the language, I don't actually care about what the language and capabilities are. I judge how good things are by the human element. That hasn't changed. The software industry is as inclined as always to engage in death marches, shortchange quality, seek imaginary silver bullets, and devalue experience. In short it isn't fundamentally different at all.

raheemm 17y ago

You could make the same arguments in every industry that exists, somehow software is the only one that gets away with it. Even our counterparts in hardware are held to a higher standard. Djikstra and Hoare are the only ones who tried to advance a higher standard and yet beyond naming an award for one and singing praises of the other, the field has continued to accept lesser standards.

tlb 17y ago
Desktop computers have tens of millions of lines of active software, and for most users they only exhibit a bug every week or so. By any measure, that level of reliability far exceeds any other industry. Chipmakers achieve 0.999999 reliability, which is impressive, but if software had only that level of reliability it would crash every millisecond.
- raheemm 17y ago
  Setting aside all other factors (complexity, progress made, resources available, etc), I would argue that the culture of bug acceptance has lead to more bugs in software than would have existed had it been less tolerant.
  - astine 17y ago
    It has also lead to more software than would exist otherwise.
    - nvoorhies 17y ago
      And software that's orders of magnitude cheaper than it would be if error free.
- nvoorhies 17y ago
  I'm trying to puzzle out the logic behind chipmakers' products being less reliable than the software that runs on them. Does the weakest link in the chain not break first?