[Sigia-l] Just b/c I love a good Mac/Win flame war ... ; ) ... seriously though

[Listera]

Dave Heller:

> there are somethings where it just became necessary to do it that way

I described the current corporate "reality". But that doesn't mean it's
optimum, inescapable or permanent. The functionality of most of those
lock-ins can in fact be duplicated on non-Windows systems. But if all one
knows is VB or Access or IE, then, yes, it takes a bit more work to realize
there's a world outside the MS cocoon.

I get to see a lot of corporate apps and it's an extremely rare case that I
find one whose functionality cannot be duplicated with a non-Windows/Ajax
front-end. Even Microsoft understands that and, dare I say, accepts it, as
witnessed by its CTO Ozzie's pronouncements and stuff like Atlas and WPF/E.

Most of the corporate stuff is data-driven. It doesn't really matter to
end-users (or designers, for that matter) just what those DBs or app servers
are run on. Not a bit. As long as they can emit/consume XML/JSON/etc, who
cares. That's the new reality.

The most malignant tumor in the corporate IT landscape, has been the notion
of "best practices." Essentially arbitrary institutionalization of brand
names and processes through fraudulent definitions of ROI. Clearly, if the
entire corporate marketplace that has been traditionally Windows-only were
sufficiently content with these products and best practices, we wouldn't
have these ecumenical online solutions from Ajax to RIAs to widgets to
Firefox to SOAs mushrooming all over the place. I think that that
decade-long dogmatic fog is finally lifting.

----
Ziya

"If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, the size of the team is too
large."