I try not to get caught up in the Microsoft rhetoric. I refuse to defend
my use of Excel versus Lotus. We were given Excel and I learned to use it,
so that is what I use for a spreadsheet. It would be hard to imagine that
it would be worth it to learn something else, even if it was marginally
better.
But I would like to hear discussions on products that facilitate working
with geo-data, and I'd like to hear about experiences with versions of APL,
APL2, APLII, etc. I never got involved with the SAS discussion, but
discussions like that appear to be helpful.
I was "raised" on IBM mainframe APL and then APL2. When we switched most
of our work to PC's, we got IBM's DOS APL2 product, but I never was too
thrilled with it. At that time, my understanding was that the STSC (the
company has changed names a time or two) APL product was better. IBM then
came out with APL2 for OS/2, which required that I use OS/2. I got to like
OS/2 just fine, but I never could fathom why folks would get all that
uptight about Microsoft versus IBM versus Sun versus whatever. IBM now has
a mature beta (is that an oxymoron?) of APL2 for NT, and it appears to be a
stable product (on NT, anyway -- we don't have Windows 95). I haven't had
any problems with it at all and I use it quite a bit. Its only
deficiencies are some of the supplied workspaces are still incomplete and
the documentation has a few typo's. We'll almost certainly get 3 licenses
as soon as IBM ships. But I haven't tried any of the other APL2s for a
long time. Has anyone become proficient with IBM's APL2 for OS/2 and found
another APL version they like better? To answer Richard's question just a
little bit, now that an APL2 release following the IBM mold that I have
"grown up with" is available for NT, I have uninstalled OS/2 and our client
OS's will soon be all Microsoft.
Our latest acquisition is MapInfo, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with
it to recommend it versus ArcInfo or anything else. However, I would think
that a discussion of products of this genre would be useful for some.
Alan Wickman, ACAS
Administrator, Actuarial Division
Nebraska Department of Insurance Phone: (402) 471-4646
941 "O" Street, Suite 400 Fax: (402) 471-6559
Lincoln, NE 68508 Internet: ins1008@vmhost.cdp.state.ne.us
Visit the CAS Web Site at http://www.casact.org
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