RE: RPG,COBOL or JAVA -- MIDRANGE-L

Perhaps, but Gartner does not take in to account that the Government
for one will not allow any language other than COBOL to be used for
development. Other than the necessary CGI/PERL/Whatever scripting
needed to bind miscellaneous things together, COBOL lives and will
continue to do so.

Also in spite of Gartner, I have noticed that many companies are
growing skittish about paying someone (we know that part will stand on
it's own. :-) ) for skills that are controlled by "one" company. That
may change but the skittishness wont!

COBOL programmers are (in spite of what the press will have you
believe) plentiful and the over 40 group are more than willing to get
back into battle gear. These folks on the whole are pretty smart and
can see things through eyes that have seen most of it already; If Java
is the wrong tool, they will say so, and for business applications ya
know bread and butter stuff, this over 40/ over 50 perhaps :-)
sometimes programmer says Java might be glamorous but COBOL gets the
receivables and paychecks out on time.

As far as Java on the 400, well since the 400 is the heir apparent to
serverdom, Java is the right tool for Web stuff ! Do I need to concern
myself with being proficient in Java.... mmmmm maybe, at least I want
to know what is going on to machines that share the same air as I do!
Am I going to loose any sleep over a language much like Pascal that is
lacking in very basic and necessary commands taking the place of a
(any) well established "proven" business language? not as long as the
spirit of JD Rockefeller burns bright in the eyes of every corporation
on the horizon, and the bottom line is the deciding vote!

______________________________________________________________________
___
Howard Weatherly

hweatherly@dlis.dla.mil
howard.weatherly@ctg.com
hweath@ibm.net

X4324

 <<RE: RPG,COBOL or JAVA>>

Subject: RE: RPG,COBOL or JAVA
From: Joe Teff <jteff19@xxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 20:19:43 -0500

I agree with a lot of what Roger said except for

> The Gartner Group, apparently believing deeply in what Jarosh is
saying,
> predict that by 2003, 40% of AS/400 applications will be written in
Java.
> Religious language convictions aside, it's pretty clear that RPG and
COBOL
> are dead for _new_ application development. Yes, there will RPG and
> Cobol maintenance work for many years--but the interesting work and
> fast path to the most AS/400 programmer income will be with Java.

I believe the quote actually said that 40% of new code will be Java.
"New
code" is relative. I interpret that to mean new development and not
enhancements to existing systems. That's a big difference. If RPG is
currently 70% of existing systems, that means that RPG will still be
42%
of new code (70% of 60%). That is still as much as or more than Java
is
predicted to be by 2003.

> If you're an AS/400 programmer, and expect to be one in five years,
it's
> important to start adding Java skills to your programming utility
belt.

I believe this will be true about OO, but not necessarily Java. I
think learning
OO can make you a better RPG IV programmer. 3 - 5 years may be to
early
to see the paradigm really change from procedural to OO in the
existing
AS/400 base. The business world changes at a much slower pace. There
are some companies always on the bleeding edge and others on the
leading
edge. Many are much more conservative. The Year 2000 crunch has many
diverted from e-commerce, the web and OO. There are many companies
that haven't figured out how to implement the Internet in their
business yet.
Oh, they are doing pilots and test projects. They have a view-only Web
page.
But, they are not really doing e-commerce. These things will all have
to come
first before they start writing their core systems in something like
OO and Java.

> If you are an RPG coder today and want a fast path into Java (this
advice
> may even apply a little to Cobol programmers), stop what you're
doing and
> get a copy of Advice Press's "Java for RPG Programmers" by Phil
> Coulthard and George Farr.

This book is worth the investment even if you don't think that you'll
be using
Java in the very near future.

Joe Teff

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