FW: OT: broken/useless ansi - console driver??

[Fairlight]

This public service announcement was brought to you by John Esak:
> You all got a mistaken impression. Dave is/was not talking about his install
> programs, maybe I brought that in. He is working on coding an app... it has
> to be recompiled and tried again. Instead of being able to just copy the new
> binaries and everything over from his workspace to the testing machine...
> and getting an error about text file busy because one of the many clients he
> has working, perhaps a desktop, perhaps a laptop somewhere, perhaps several
> alternate logins, etc., it now just happily copies the binary and the
> working clients crash out. What was simple before, now becomes a hassle....
> different... whatever you want to say. I am the one who thinks it is

That doesn't sound like a "test" machine to me.  Something I refrained from
commenting on in the original when it was first posted, but it sounds at
least semi-production.  And I personally wouldn't want to
code/debug/compile/install time after time onto even a semi-production
machine.  Sounds odd for a developer to be doing that, but maybe it just
sounds worse than it is, taken out of fuller context that isn't my business.
My first thought when this was brought in as an example was, "Yeah, but you
shouldn't be doing -that- anyway."  

I agree the problematic behaviour is an issue, no matter why one encounters
it, however.  It's absurd, in fact.

> faster file system would appease everyone. Not me. It's kind of a bait and
> switch to do these kinds of *major* changes without ANY indication that they
> are there.

There's -some- indication--the major number changed after damned near a
decade of stagnation.  I don't think one can actually say there's -no-
indication that something changes when the major changed.  Whether or not
the "flagship" name should have been changed is going to be a matter of
contention, probably.  Sounds like they should have, but I don't have a
firm opinion, not having used it myself, and having only heard related
horror stories.  I think the only two people for whom I've heard it went
smoothly were JPR and Bob.

On the flip side, when fP 6.0 comes out I'm sure there will be many that
feel it would be more appropriately labelled 5.0.16 rather than 6.0, for
lack of new progressive features, and additions for things that should have
been there over half a decade ago (UNC's come to mind).

> P.S. - A dead simple and very close analogy would be if filePro's next
> version just blithely overwrote locked records with new data... would
> everyone say... oh, that's just the new Unixware way of things, get used to
> it. Ridiculous.

I can think of a few almost-unthinking loyalists that might.  Nobody whose
opinion I'd trust, however.

I agree, ridiculous.

mark->