Re: what was the single mgmt decision made in mid-1990s that slowed the evolution of ILE/RPG?

I'm going to regret this but ...

On 16-Feb-09, at 3:51 PM, midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

If a decision was made to cutoff development of ILE, I wish people in
the know had spoken up and made the decision public.

At least you had the decency to include the word "if", and perhaps if such a decision had been made we might have done so. The fact that you think IBM should have gone in a specific direction with ILE doesn't mean that any of the architects at IBM thought so. The only decision I can recall in the arena was a technical decision (not management) to not turn RPG into an OO language - but it had nothing to do with any architectural decisions made about ILE.

What about the assertion that the AS400 was the death of the S/38
computer movement? Shops that were forward looking and interested in
writing cuting edge computer apps choose the S/38. Those that wanted
a 1960s architecture their company could afford selected the S/34 and
S/36. When the S/36 was folded into the S/38, all those S/36 users
came on board and started lobbying for the system not to be changed.
Resulting in the decision to lock down the features of ILE. Was ILE
designed by the S/36 or S/38 side of IBM?

What about it? It is an assertion without any foundation that I am aware of - so my initial reaction is "bullshit". I have met and worked with many S/38 and S/36 users - the only reason that S/36 users were "behind" had to do with limits in CCP and RPG II. Certainly there were some "forward thinkers" in the S/38 community - there were also people doing amazing things with S/36 against all the odds. The only "lobbying" I was ever party to was from S/36 users wanting more ease-of-use functionality in the OS. For example, the move from the old programmers menu to PDM was a result of S/36 people lobbying for a POP type interface. That was an S/36 initiative that benefited the S/ 38 folks and it wasn't the only one.

On the IBM side, the vast majority of the people I worked with were either from the S/38 side of the house like myself or had embraced the S/38 view of the world.

I have to assume that the 6.1 changes to the OS and ILE were part of the "lock down"?


Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com