RE: When an AS/400 is called an iSeries

["Lukas Beeler" <l.beeler@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> What does vendor lock-in have to do with RPG code?  I don't see the 
> correlation.  Would the customer be less locked in if the code were 
> Java, Visual Basic, C#, COBOL, or whatever.   

Java is a different animal - Java is going Open Source and available on
almost every halfway sane platform.

But yes, Visual Basic, C# et. al. usually mean vendor lock in just as
RPG - but as Microsoft is currently the leading platform, customers do
not feel the vendor lock in (maybe a market expert could explain this
phenomenom).

Another point is that COBOL and RPG are considered legacy - .NET with VB
and C# are not. Java is not.

> I just don't see the correlation between vendor lock-in and RPG.

RPG is vendor lock-in at it's finest. RPG has it's very own world, that
is completely different from all mainstream languages. 

> It's pretty clear that 5250 use has really dropped off.

No. Definitivly not. The reason why this hasn't happened is the
excellent backwards compatibility that the System i provides. I know
several shops that run 10 year old applications.

> From a purely technological standpoint, this is a bad thing.

But for business reasons, it might make sense to stick to the old
applications, as long as they run under a supported platform. 

> Why pick on RPG?

Because it's legacy technology. How many students do you know that know
RPG? What's the average age of an RPG programmer? How many people do you
know that never had to work with a System i, but are now learning RPG?

I know several Unix/C programmers that have switched to using .NET/C# -
but I've never seen somebody switch to RPG/System i. I would be
interested in samples/experiences from others on this list. Do you know
people that switched e.G. from .NET/C# or Java to RPG?