RE: Development ideas -- MIDRANGE-L

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And I can always dig out my old Systems Analysis book from college.  I
remember it urging to stay away from new fangled languages like RPG, until
the bugs get worked out.

Rob Berendt
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin




"Weatherly, Howard" <Howard.Weatherly@dlis.dla.mil>
Sent by: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
10/18/2002 08:08 AM
Please respond to midrange-l


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        Subject:        RE: Development ideas


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Yup, especially for someone like me who believes that beyond COBOL ALGOL
FORTRAN PL/I and REXX, everything else is superfluous!

I do not know so much about VB, but normal everyday BASIC is ok, it does
it's job, I just don't need yet another programming language, to the above
throw in RPG AUTOCODER EASYCODER SL5 SPL BAL ALC NEAT BEST BESTOP FOURTH
LISP SNOBOL MUMPS ad-nausium then throw in JAVA PASCAL and whatever that
other PASCAL like thing was and you exemplify the Tower of Babel.

Anyone have others to add to the pile of (useful for their purpose) but
otherwise unnecessary languages?

-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Jensen [mailto:brad@elstore.com]
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 2:26 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Development ideas



----- Original Message -----
From: "Weatherly, Howard" <Howard.Weatherly@dlis.dla.mil>
To: <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 10:04 AM
Subject: RE: Development ideas


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> Not to pick a fight or start a war Adam, but what platforms do you know
of
> that do not have a COBOL compiler on them, and what better language is
there
> for writing client server business applications that thousands of people
can
> probably understand?

VB6 dlls in the ASP framework. Fast operation, interactive debugging, and
three million programmers.

Of course, Windows might go away, and some other computer than the PC
might
be cheaper, faster, and
more scalable, with a greater software support base and more trained
professionals,
but not in our lifetimes.

And I speak as an expert COBOL programmer ( I wrote a query language in
COBOL, as well as
numerous applications, a text editor, and a macrocompiler.)

> However, I am biased! but I do agree with your suggestion about Java, I
just
> disagree with the premise of your argument to get there!

VB6 is a much easier language to learn and use than Java.

Why people don't realize that the scarce resource is PEOPLE, not computing
power, is
beyond me.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Lang [mailto:aalang@rutgersinsurance.com]

> To agree with Joe, I would look at a Java solution.
>
> You can develop for one platform and have a lot of flexibility to move
to
> another if needed.
>
> The same expertise your coders have on making the server side
application
> components will also extend to make a java "fat client" or web based
applet.
>
> JDBC will interact with nearly all databases out there (from DB2 to
> PostgreSQL (open source)).
>
> The only thing I would recommend besides Java would be C, then next
> "portable" language.

But be sure to make all your variable names in Russian, spelling them
backwards to avoid comprehensibility.


> I think when redeveloping applications, you want to avoid "lock in"
> situations,which would be the situation when using RPG or COBOL.  You
will
> be basically forcing reliance on the AS/400. Going a Java route, it
makes
> you more adaptable, as I see it.
>
> Adam Lang
> Systems Engineer
> Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
> http://www.rutgersinsurance.com

Use VB6 to write DLLs. host them in ASP (VBscript) on top of IIS.
Maintain state inside the VB6 program, it's just like writing for one user
at a time.
Don't use the ASP session variables, and use ASP application objects only
when you
want to share something between sessions.

IIS will create one copy of your code that will service all sessions, and
remain
in RAM while sessions remain active. There will be a separate data area
for
each
session invocation.

It will run with a fairly small memory footprint, and like a bat out of
hell
(ie fast for
non-American English readers).

And you can develop the application in the interactive VB environment,
testing your web pages
with breakpoints in the VB code.  Fast fast fast development.

Java looks big, and slow, and not very robust to me. We saw one Java
application try to load on a PC, and it took a 48 MB environment download
just to get started.

Brad Jensen
www.elstore.com


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