Re: [SLUG] operating systems and schools

[Alexander Else <aelse@nospam.ozemail.com.au>]

At 22:37 01/02/2000 +1100, Terry Collins wrote:
>Umm, is it just me late at night, or is this a bit oxymoronic?
>Don't do anything new, because we have such an investment in the
>existing system and someone might be inconvenience.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.  I am by no means saying that we
shouldn't do anything new.  What I am saying is that we shouldn't do
something just because it is new.  There is an established base of
companies that use VB programs, there is a need for people to support them.
 To remove this need yes you could recode everything under a different
os/language/whatever.  Is this expense, inconvenience, stress all
justified?  ie.  are you really going to gain anything by recoding the same
application from scratch?


>But, isn't this what the IT industry spends all it's time doing?
>Throwing out the baby with the bathwater and starting all over again?

It takes a lot of time and money to develop a product and something has to
be going really badly for starting over to be considered the better option.
 Remember that my argument was in response to someone saying effectively
(paraphrasing here) "why pay for VB when linux has a good development
environment?".  My response can be summed up with "Because the gain is
often far outweighed by the expense".

Hope that this makes my position a little clearer.

Alexander Else
Internet Operations Technician
OzEmail / UUNET Asia Pacific Operations

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