RE: what was the single mgmt decision made in mid-1990s. period

I don't necessarily disagree with your individuals points, but it seems to
me that updating RPG and not providing a GUI was putting the cart before the
horse. IBM got that wrong. Of course I am speaking with the benefit of
hindsight.

Had IBM introduced a GUI before updating RPG, I'd be willing to wager that
we wouldn't be having a "why didn't anyone use the GUI tools" thread. And I
mean better tooling than the atrocities they've inflicted on us so far as "a
solution".

I think the lack of an integrated simple GUI server - probably serving HTML,
but who knows - is just another nail in the coffin despite the existence of
the excellent toolkits and solutions out there.

The solution should be delivered *with* the box. The "i" stands for
integration, right ?

Regards
Evan Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Wednesday, 18 February 2009 2:15 p.m.
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: what was the single mgmt decision made in mid-1990s. period


On 17-Feb-09, at 7:24 PM, midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Although I don't disagree with the idea that people could have taken
more
advantage of what is there now, letting IBM off hook for not
providing a GUI
because the community didn't massively adopt RPG IV or whatever
doesn't
wash

I was responding in the context of "why didn't IBM do x" - and in that
context - yes it does wash in my opinion.

IBM responded to a barrage of RPG community requests and provided a
new version of RPG. It still isn't used as much as it should be. If
you were IBM and the same community came back and said they wanted a
native GUI would _you_ risk the investment? I don't think I would.

Perhaps more importantly - if people got the native GUI they wouldn't
like it - and that would result in them not using it. Why wouldn't
they like it? Because it wouldn't (and shouldn't) work like a 5250.

I'll probably get dumped all over for this but - It seems to me that
most of the people who would use a native GUI are already writing web
apps using alternative approaches from Nathan and Brad with their own
tool kits to those who use CGIDEV2 and Renaissance, to those who are
using Java or PHP to front-end, to those who use Look or ... The boat
has sailed - there are many excellent solutions out there - it is 5+
years too late for IBM to do it.


Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com