Re: Market pressures for more reliable software

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

How far back can you remember? :-)

Seriously. I worked in a datacenter where the programming for the whole
organization was done in a central location by an MIS department and batch
jobs were run by the computer operators and all anybody had was dumb
terminals. There may have been *pockets* of development taking place outside
of MIS (the model was already beginning to crumble because of mini
computers) but basically, if you wanted some program developed or changed,
you had to go through MIS. (We were infinitely more responsive to customer
change requests than Microsoft will ever be given that your chances of
asking them to change something about MS-Word and getting anything but
laughter are zero.) The big mainframe stored all your code and all your data
and had all the advantages that Bill Gates is claiming for his internet
based central repository - access to your data & programs from wherever you
happen to be (if a terminal was there) and immediate updates of any code as
they occur. The disadvantages are all those we had with centralized MIS
departments/mainframes and then some.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote in
message news:3b2f40fc$7$fuzhry$mr2ice@va.news.verio.net...
>
> A model that has no basis in reality. Applications developement was
> decentralized for as far back as I can remember. Santayana.
>