The 13,152 Days Of The AS/400 Platform, And Counting
June 24, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan
In the computer market, whether it is for laptops or datacenter iron, it is hard to say if longevity is gauged in human years or dog and cat years or something else like maybe historical or geological time.
In some ways, 36 years old, which is what has just happened to the AS/400 platform a few days ago, is a long time to do anything, and in others, 36 years is just the beginning of a process. As we have pointed out when celebrating the AS/400’s birthday in prior years, the origins of the platform reach back to 1978 when the System/38 was launched and also to 1983 when the System/36 came out, and really, all of these are linked back to the System/3 back in 1969.
The historical birthday of the AS/400 – now IBM i – platform is somewhat arbitrary, but the celebration is not. Which is the point.
Whenever the summer solstice rolls around, those of us in the IBM i community get an extra reason to be happy and joyful. The longest day of the year is gradually moving backwards through the calendar because an Earth year is actually equivalent to 365.242374 rotations of the planet on its axis, which works out to 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 1.1 seconds of time but it is against a calendar that has 365 days and one leap year every four years to make 366 days.
What can we say about year 36? Well, first of all, 36 is a perfect number depending on your definition of a perfect number. Some people say a perfect number is an integer that is equal to the sum of its divisors; others say it is the product of those divisors. If you believe the latter, then 36 is a perfect number because 1 x 2 x 3 x 6 = 36. We don’t think this is true because this example is being selective by divisors. (3×12 is 36, for instance, and 12 is not in the equation for the perfect number of 36. Similarly, 9×4 is 36, and neither 9 nor 4 are in that equation, either.)
Maybe perfection is not in a number at all, but in embracing the numbers that you have. That is how we feel about it as we age because we are forward looking animals, using the past for comfort and joy and as a compass to guide us into our future, whatever it may be. In this way, 36 is indeed perfect, and so will 37 be and every other age that follows it. Every year is a milestone, and really every day that things get done is a milestone. And as you read this on a traditional Monday morning, the AS/400 and its progeny have been getting things done for 13,152 days. When you say it that way, it is more tangible. You can feel the weight and honor in that.
So as we celebrate the AS/400’s 36th birthday and look ahead to its 40th birthday four years hence, when we be approaching the Power12 generation of machines and maybe IBM i 8.4, we just wanted to say thank you to all of the companies who continue to invest in the platform, the techies who keep it running and keep modifying its applications to fit the time and the requirements, the end users who don’t curse it out and who know it is almost always a network problem when things go awry. . . .
Raise a glass, be it coffee or whisky or any other beverage of choice, say a toast, and then get back to work as we always do.
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I was an IBM Systems Engineer (SE) in 1978 , having started at IBM in 1962, when IBM was thriving and growing because IBM provided not only great hardware but also gereat applications software like the Installed User Progrms (IUPs) and support to IBM customers wor;dwide.
Today IBM hardware is thousands of times faster, but IBM applications software and customr applications support has long since disappeared, and IBM is in late innings (9th inning) of doing what is now doing with the AS/400 and System z, leaving that profitible business to SAP, Oracle . Microsoft and others.
IBM simply must find another Dr. Soltis with extradinary vision and implement new solutions which provide all customers with essentially turnkey applicatioons which essentally eliminate the corporate programmer (no more C++ in RPG) and provide the customers with the real-time ability to instantky create and use virtually any application as specified and created by end users.
That means scrapping the current IBM management and develpment teams now.
Impossible to disagree with Paul above.
For central business uses is IMHO one of the better designed operating systems, yes, despite IBM of today.
As I ranted many times, not having invested in time in an improved and compatible graphical workstation terminal protocol (raster and/or vector based, maybe recycling the plethora of OS/2 code or similar) is one of the many factor that guided the choice for many “decision makers”. Yes, I have a licensed “web gui tool” on my systems, still is not a standard on all installation (like DDS and 5250) and that fragments the scene a lot.