Re: netbsd on vax 11/730; booting in sim

["Andrew Sporner" <asporner%googlemail.com@localhost>]

Hi

>  I'm sorry for jumping in, but I just couldn't let this pass. ;)

Neither can I :-)

>  This is utter nonsense.  I recognize it as a particularly American brand of
> well-trained consumerism.  As you're in Germany, I'm absolutely shocked to
> hear it.  But either way, it's utter nonsense.  "Thing v1" doesn't
> automatically stop working just because "Thing v2" has been introduced.  Or,
> more specifically, "Thing Design" doesn't automatically stop being viable
> because "Other Thing Design" has been let out of the stable.

Well I am an American in Germany (nearly 8 years now), and at the risk
of being slightly off-topic
(actually more than slightly :-))  There is some truth on both sides
of the arguments
here.

1.  Which nobody has alluded to, which is the "religion" factor.  I remember in
the mid '80s in the US hearing about the die-hard 36 bit'ers that would accept
that their time was over when our people would come back from Decus.  This
isn't any different.

2.  Lazy factor.  I have observed while working at Hyatt's central Systems (as
systems architect) and at Walgreens too (same capacity) that there is a large
amount of "if its not broken, don't fix it".  The problem is that as
time goes on
things (like source code) can get lost--which requires
"mission-critical" applications
to remain on their legacy platforms.

3.  Companies go Broke.  Even with the greatest care companies take to
make sure their supplier is viable, wierd stuff happens and the company goes
broke.  Now what happens when there is a specific application (that might even
have been custom written) is no longer available in source form.  That requires
the legacy systems remain.

On the other side of the arguments...

In Germany I have noticed rampid "trendiness".  Something new comes out--
its snapped up.  I have a pet peeve about Java --which doesn't belong here but
there tends to be an all or nothing philophy with respect to implementation of
something new.   There are a lot of things I see in Java that should never have
been done so.  "C" programming????  thats just archaic (look for any open
positions that say "C" and not "C++".

What I have seen is a certain lack of "pragmatism" in a lot of areas.  But that
is really all I can say about this.   However I didn't really experience such
levels of "Consensus building" than I have found here.   The idea of "My way
or the highway" is literally an anathema.


Cheers



Andy