RE: When an AS/400 is called an iSeries -- MIDRANGE-L

Who says? What about COBOL & RPG make the legacy?

Common opinion. Go ask people that never touched a System i about these
programming languages.

Ask CIOs of non-System i companies what they think about RPG and COBOL.
That's why I said you should never ever mention these names when trying
to sell the System i to new customers.

VB & C# aren't? I consider them to be vendor lock-in just as much as
RPG is.

RPG is only slightly more 'vendor lock-in' then VB & C# are because

you

are somewhat limited in your choice of hardware. You still need

Windows

to run VB & C#. If that's not vendor lock-in, what is?

It is vendor lock in. But people don't see it that way, because
Microsoft currently has the leading platform. Let's assume you'd want to
start developing with .NET/C#.

As your User-Agent: Header tells me, you're already running Windows XP.
So the only thing you'd have to do to start developing in C# would be to
download Visual Studio Express
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/). And now you can program in
.NET/C#.

But if you want to start developing in RPG.

Let's also assume you're currently not working for a company that
already has a System i. Now you've heard much good about the System i,
and want to consider it as a new platform for your internal environment.

You can't even learn RPG without access to a System i. Buying a System i
for development would cost a lot, as you would need a base 515 and also
5722WDS. A lot of cost just for trying out a platform. For other
platforms, IBM has a test drive program (www.ibm.com/shop/testdrive).
Windows doesn't have this problem, it's already there (the advantages of
a monopoly). Linux doesn't have this problem because you can run it on
almost any normal computer for free.

This is probably also one of the reasons why I've never seen students
that want to learn RPG (but many of them that were learning C#).

And when looking at both the major swiss job markets (www.jobscout24.ch,
www.monster.ch), there are 4 RPG jobs available in total right now.
Compared to a total of 150 C# jobs.

And none of these 4 RPG jobs were for a new project - one of them even
explicitly stated that it was about the support of a legacy application
that is being phased out.

Why does anyone have to switch? Expand your horizons to encompass
multiple platforms & languages.

In the end, any application can only have one primary language.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Gibbs
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 3:28 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: When an AS/400 is called an iSeries

Lukas Beeler wrote:

Another point is that COBOL and RPG are considered legacy - .NET with

and C# are not. Java is not.

Who says? What about COBOL & RPG make the legacy? Considering some of
the things you can do with ILE RPG these days, I would hardly consider
it legacy.

RPG is vendor lock-in at it's finest. RPG has it's very own world,

that

is completely different from all mainstream languages.

VB & C# aren't? I consider them to be vendor lock-in just as much as
RPG is.

RPG is only slightly more 'vendor lock-in' then VB & C# are because you
are somewhat limited in your choice of hardware. You still need Windows
to run VB & C#. If that's not vendor lock-in, what is?

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?

Why does anyone have to switch? Expand your horizons to encompass
multiple platforms & languages.

I didn't switch from RPG to Java ... I work in RPG *AND* Java. I plan
to do so for quite a long time.

david