Blowing the Dust Off of an IBM AS/400 Server

> She hated the move to Windows. All the sudden, everything was slow, error prone, fiddly. Keyboard navigation was mostly gone and although employees could start working with less training, she knew the move was generally a big step backwards.

She was right.

Autohotkey can solve a lot of these problems.

Though it can require some politics playing to accept it as a legitimate tool.

My father worked on AS/400 applications as a project manager. When they moved to Windows he changed job, but still in the same field. Among his former users, the preferred replacement was Visual FoxPro applications that looked pretty much exactly like the old AS/400 programs---not any newfangled client/server or browser-based thing, even though there were already some available.

Well, Windows (and all window-based, graphical UI) encourages you to use the _mouse pointer_ with it's clumsy properties like navigating a visual field and upon locating an interactive element, using at most 5 different action buttons (clicks and scrolls).

Compared to that, these old systems were modal (edit, browse, etc modes) and keyboard-based with it's ~100 action buttons, where pixel-by-pixel navigating was not needed.

From an efficiency standpoint, petting a computer with mouse-based navigation is ridiculous. It might help a newbie until they explore a software's features but later on it's a waste of time. And your mother knew this very well.

I developed for AS400s back in the day and IMHO only the iPad comes close to the consistent UI that data entry workers need and expect. I remember my employer introducing a Windows GUI front end and being told by major customers that they needed to offer green screen entry again or they would buy my employer and make them do it.

> I'm a UX designer/developer. There is something to be said for these old terminal systems, when it comes to repetitive daily tasks.

Out of curiosity, are you then employing the experiences of your mother when designing user interfaces?

I'm a programmer, and I rarely design anything more complex than a static website or a CLI. I have no illusions about UI design being easy. However, I am disappointed that it seems most UI designers, whom I do assume to be competent, are working on UIs that are optimised for ease-of-use by the novice, rather than the expert.

I use and enjoy several programs that have "expert-optimised" UIs. Emacs is one, and the Unix shell is another. However, these are grown in an ad-hoc way, usually by people who did not think too hard about UI. I wonder what an optimised expert-oriented UI would look like, if it were developed by true UI experts.

I worked on an AS/400 system 4 years ago during an high school internship in Italy. It's still used in a medium-size company. It was painful at first but since my first language was Pascal the difference was bearable. Sure it helped me with my formation as a young developer. Anyway, it was fast and sure AS/400 still can be competitive but in a business pov it is a mess: there are almost no developers with an adequate formation and the old developers are close to retirement. My main accomplishment was to run battleship and some other games, I'll find the link with the library to install if I have time.

I have worked with AS400, and its concept of an input queue is great. Basically, none of your inputs are ignored if the system is busy, they are cached by the terminal and sent one by one when the system responds.

To give you an example, imagine hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del, entering your login and password, hitting Enter, entering FFOX to run Firefox, hitting Enter, hitting F3 to open a tab, entering news.ycombinator.com, hitting Enter, hitting F3 for another tab, entering another URL, hitting Enter and it just works. Your machine can be waiting to show you the login screen, or applying some global policies, or launching Firefox, but it will never lose your input.

My first job required the use of an AS/400 for data entry. Hated it at first, but really grew to appreciate it for what it did. That single machine ran an entire manufacturing site. When we were forced to use a Windows front-end to enter data, it was an order of magnitude slower, it was that cumbersome and inefficient. Other front-ends, doing real-time visualisation of the plant operations were actually useful. But the AS/400 fills an important niche, and it's one which I don't think modern systems do a good job at replacing.

Fastest UI for expert users (fastest to slowest):

Keyboard > Mouse > Touch > Voice

My father's employer moved from an AS/400 to some poorly implemented Oracle system about a decade ago.

Hates it every day and still gives me examples of how the old system was superior and faster.

Yep, I currently work at one and know of another in town. Both companies have thousands of employees. It will still be a while before we ever get off of it too. We're taking steps but it has been around for a long time and is pretty reliable.

"You'd be surprised to think that the IBM AS/400 still keeps the lights on for a number of large business."

I wouldn't be given the people that use ours, day and night shifts, have never seen it crash or freeze for the decade or so they worked here. They say it only goes down when a cheap sysadmin accidentally unplugs it trying to swap out a different server or if they have to image stuff after suspected hacks. Otherwise, they're the Energizer bunny of servers.

UPS's import system runs on one. Home depots retail system did until at least 2010.

Don't be assured of that: the failure modes of silicon increase every time you shrink it due to physics just being a huge problem. That's one of reasons new stuff doesn't last as long. The new systems will run on nodes with more problems developers have to fight. I suspect they systems won't last as long.

I appreciate the data point on that one. Sounds like it aged well. Which CPU('s) did it have?

What in particular do you find really cool? I think the binary translator is really cool, I want to find more details about it.

I have passing familiarity. A former client used an MCP-based system (first an A Series, then later a Clearpath system on PC hardware) to run their line-of-business system (a small bank). A friend of mine worked for Unisys right out of college in the early 70's writing ALGOL code for the MCP. She says that it has its roots in the old Burroughs B5000. From what I've read they are odd beasts, and have some really interesting hardware-level security architecture. I never got to play with the system, aside from typing a couple of commands now-and-again into the OS "shell" (called MARC-- Menu Assisted something-or-other), and a little bit of editing in the editor CANDE.

It's the invisible machine. They are all still running core systems in a lot of companies.

Yeah, it seems like the author isn't aware of how common AS/400s still are in business environments. Thankfully, I have so far managed to dodge having to learn how to use it by suggesting that the other members of my team continue to be the point people for it.

I have 4 BlueZone Mainframe Display windows open right now connected to AS400 servers. I do every single day at work :).

In my halcyon enthusiast-learning days I tried to approach Mainframes and the IBM world to learn anything I could about the different platforms, architectures - basically getting into it. IBM's arrogance kept me at an arms length, and I kind of hold a grudge towards them to this day. What in the world did they gain from taking the stance of being enthusiast-unfriendly? For instance they refused to sell me a fast-synch monitor for my RS/6000 workstation purchased from a defunct company. And so on... Good thing that Linux steamrolled most of its Unix/AIX dominance. Like a sweet revenge served cold.

To be fair, one day a few years ago I did get access to my clients' mainframe last year. A Z-something big-iron running on of the frames on AIX which I had shell access to. It was a "whoa man, I'm in. I got access to the mainframe!"-moment. My favourite tools were installed by someone else, so it was quite enjoyable; midnight commander, zshell and bourne again shell were present :).

Same here. Large insurance company.