Category: the Rant Board
So I've had it with the PC and it's new software. IBM mainframes work just fine so why did we have to go fix something that isn't broken? Now when I copy a file it only takes one line and I lose all control. I don't get to write JCL to spessify what job class the copy should run as, it's priority, etc. When I create files it's just a black box, I can't create specific storrage classes and have an audit trail of what happened. I'm tired of these user interfaces that make everything look pretty. Back in my day we could run a CICS region to handle thousands of online requests an hour in under 16 megs of memory. As I type this firefox takes up at least 50 megs of ram, it's such a waste of resources to provide a pretty menu bar to click on and pictures considering how much resources it uses. And this world wide web is another thing, CICS applications work just fine for entering data and if you want to get information you can use FTP to pull down a dataset and view it in the ISPF editor. Why do we need all these new fancy browsers that require yet more hardware, bandwidth, and an entire new way of learning to do things? Why do we need email either? So what if sending messages on TSO doesn't give you fancy folders and links you can still get text to someone else. I can't believe people these days expecting all the bels and whistles maybe they should learn to use what already existed so we don't waste so much time reinventing something that worked just fine for the express purpis of making it prettyer.
I can't even put you down and start a fight because I'm so deeply impressed with your knowledge. And I'm not even being sarcastic. I've never heard of any of these things.Job classes, storage classes, cics, ispf, tso? Wow! I'm certainly not against e-mail or the world wide web, though ftps are cool. What the hell is a tso? Is that like netsend? Despite your sarcasm and direct mockery of me, you did make several valid points. There's way too much bloatware these days, sometimes for making things prettier, other times for advanced features that most nonprogrammers don't use. It's like a battle of the companies to see who can inflate their software the most. And then, of course, you have bundled software that you may or may not want but that some programs require you to accept in order to install them. Thank The Gods for light versions. And if all that's required is to remove the "annoying" command line interface, I've seen several programs in DOS, Mac and even Windows that have very nice menu interfaces without all the graphics.
Okay, so now will someone please explain all that stuff at the top? I'm really really curious. And to The roman Battle Mask, maybe, since you're apparently even more knowledgeable than Tim patterson himself, why not answer some of my posts with genuinely helpful insight so that I don't have to bother all these poor people here and drive myself nuts seeking answers?
The reason I don't try to helpfully answer your posts is because I don't have the knolidge to or care to do the research. Dos is a dead technology accept for some nitch markets such as embedded systems. If you want an OS with a powerful commandline and good text mode tools available try Vinux at http://vinux.org.uk it's a version of Linux designed for use by blind users. Linux is the best OS out there for power users, screen readers for both the commandline and GUI are actively being developed. The screen readers are open source and actively supported, something which can not be said about the Dos screen readers. Linux also has modern hardware support and drivers for many more devices then Dos.
You're mostly right when it comes to screenreaders, though I have heard of a fairly recent software package created for JAWS for DOS which enables it to work with E-Speak, a software synthesizer. There's also ProVox, which has been made open source, so the opportunity to improve upon a preexisting screenreader in order to meet the demands of modern software is there. Also, Enhanced DR-DOS is constantly being updated, with new refinements and patches that enable it to work with modern devices and formats. And let's not forget the extremely extensive page that debunks 37 fallacies relating to DOS.
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ak621/DOS/DOS-Fal.html
So while it may not have all the features and total richness of Unix/Linux, the modern systems, at least, are a very good competition and a good alternative os for meeting many of today's challenges.
Here's another complaint, mostly about Windows, since Leopard doesn't do it that much. I hate all that junk that's left over when you delete a program. Instead of installing the whole thing in one directory, you've got bits and pieces of most programs everywhere. And everything is codependent, so if you delete something that's being used by another program, that program won't work, and I've heard that in programming, you've gotta keep track of what all the other things are doing. Headache.
I couldn't agree more. I don't even know what nine tenths of that stuff is. This topic brings to mind a rather funny song by an outfit called Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, which you used to be able to find on mp3.com a few years back. The song was called Every OS Sucks and the sentiment is pretty much the same as that voiced here.
Ah, found it. Don't think it's the original, judging by the description, but done very nicely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg0iRd4i0qk
Opa! Someone's on my side. He should come on and help the guys program Enhanced DR-DOS so we could blow everyone away and have an os that doesn't suck!
Guess he still had a normal toaster and tv back then. lol
I wonder if the same kinds of arguements were maid when the first Car's came out as aposed to horse and buggy! who needs them con founded contracptions
There's a time and a place for improvement. As I said in the real post that this one's mocking "why I'm So Antidigital", computerised and digital things do have there places. They've done alot for us. It's when manufacturers get ridiculous with it that I get pissed off.
Well Eleni, that Youtube vid was the right one, but it was incomplete. Whoever uploaded it chopped off the very beginning. I listen to that one a lot though because I totally agree.
There's another one with a really long spoken intro as well at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85p7JZXNy8
Maybe, that's the one you mean? Anyway, glad to meet someone in real life who agrees with me. Maybe, you can help me figure out some of my questions here on The Boards.
Nice ...
and don't forget ... those were also the days if you wanted a jacuzi you farted in the bathtub ...
haha Well, I still have no idea what on Earth he was talking about. I'm guessing punch card machines or the ones with the huge disks that you actually mounted that only held one kb. Interestingly enough, the banking system in the United States still runs on those old machines. I don't mean your local little bank where the clerk writes up stuff. I mean the actual system itself. And the older the programmers get, the more trouble we'll all be in cause they don't teach that stuff anymore and they're not upgrading any time soon. I think other hugely important systems run on main frames too, or some did until recently.
No, mainframes are not done on punch cards.
Their systems are being and have been upgraded.
There is a lot of old code out there, and what The Roman Battle Mask referred to - job class, priority, etc., typically used in COBOLT and similar languages still exists in those environments; I've never worked there but that's what I've been told by folks who have.
However, the nonsense you've heard about the systems falling apart is, um, a decade late? That's all the same clap trap that was spouted in 1999, before, ... what date was that anyway?
There is a concept called patching, where a developer, even if s/he doesn't work directly on the old code, can analyze how the data goes into and comes out of it, and develop a wrapper on top of it, e.g. turn a two-digit number to four digits by calculations and context.
Conspiracy theories aside, banks are extremely cautious with their software and are by no means falling apart. Your information is ten years out of date, though I imagine the myths make for great campfire ghost stories; maybe the Roman Battle Mask will wait till you've worked yourself up, then jump out from behind the bushes and BOO!
I need a beer
I fear that people hate chage. Smile. You don't know why Windows will not completely uninstall your programs, or why it doesn't work to your methods, because you will not take the time to relearn. These no good changes make things work smoother, give you more reliability, communications is better between machines, and I could go on. I have use many things, but I see why change it better then the old. Contrary to this boards believe the older concepts are kept in new tech inabling better concepts. Should we stay with say Dos because it worked, or should we move to windows, because it is better? Change makes people afraid, and fear keeps them stuck.
Actually, I heard this from a friend who's father works on main frames. I had no idea of any of this before he told me. It's not that they're falling apart in any case. According to him, it's that they don't make these systems anymore and what will happen when they break down, both in the need for parts and who will repair them?
Anything built can be repaired sure, but is it worth the effert unless you are an hobbyist?
I worked for Wachovia as a programmer for 5 years. I know how things work there. Sure, partof the processing is on mainframes but it is slowly and surely being shifted out of there, there are tons of redundant systems. I do nothave the privellege to talk about what technology was used exactly or how, but it was a stringent, compicated process, every update had multiple peer reviews and update procedures with three layers of testing. There was an unimaginable amount of talent from all over the world on the programming team.
It is definitely not the programmers fault the idiot in charge of the bank decided to buy a California mortgage company for 6 to 10 times its worth for 12 billion dollars and lost all of that money, which brought the bank down to where it was tkken over, not to mention offering negatively amortized loans to customers, in a period of economic decline and ropping house prices.
We even used dos, where it made sense, we used linux/unix/java/perl/c/c++/tcl tk/k shell scripting/sql server/.net/asp.net/html and more in our code, I worked on all of these technologies, we used what fit best for the task at hand, we found Windows and the .net technology to be reliable, clear, consistent and the best and easiest to work with.
Dos and Basic programming has no error/exception handling, no object orientation, veyr little powre to do things, little or no possibilities to interact with database, xml, memory processes, ftp/firewall, web services, messaging, complex mathematical functions etc, it is just a lousy little script language thatis cool to make one's music, make simple filesystem scripts and such (and it doesn't have to be anything more, it's great for what it is made for, but if one thinks one can rewrite an O.s. with it or do anything fancy, one is hugely mistaken).
Windows has its faults, as does Unix/linux and Apple, they all have their strong sides too, but I would choose any of these systems, in a heartbeat, over some obscure brand of dos that is being developed more out of some bizarre archeological interest rather thanpractical need.
I am highly amused by Tiff's dos obsession so I keep posting, heck, this site is made to hav fun right. In one breath she claims Windows makes no sens and dos is right and easy to use and superior, on the other hand it has been, what, 6 months, she can't even install the thing, she can't go into help systems and understand and manipulate the building blocks but has to ask every single step of the way, and yet she claims thinks this is easier.
There is a place for command line interrface, the purpose, as I see it, is at least two-fold, to have a place to run scheduled tasks and scripts from and write such scripts (for all its simplicity QBasic or Perl or Windows Scripting Host can be used to write a script that fires off a data check or file check or data back up every x hours or minute, such things are best written as command line applications and run via a scheduler or Autosys or similarjob scheduling systems), the other is commands that make more sense via a command line, such as copying all files ending in, say, .txt in folder x to folder y, or rename all files with a given extension or pattern, this can not easily be done graphically, and there is no reason to exclude either graphical or commandline interface.
So, yes, I am half irritated, but mostly amused at these posts with unfounded outrageous claims about dos, then proven false by the posters own inability to even set the operating system up, let alone do anything with it.
Windows is made for users like her that do not have the courage or patience or whatever to dig wayinto the commands and the way the O.S. works to do a simple thing,like surfing or checking email or writing code, dos or unix is fine for those who hav the patience, interest andintelligence to learn it. I am not claim she does not have the intelligence, because she is far from stupid, but somehow she does not see what needs to be done, the time that needs to be spent and the patience and understanding one needs to have to use such a special operating system and get it to work.
You can't have you bloody cake and eat it and not gain any weight, one has to work out to get that weight off.