RE: Mono on IBM i - Porting Mono to AIX and IBM i

I don't think you're going to find that "one reason" why a non-specific IBMi shop should choose Mono (or Python, PHP, Node, etc) over the others.



-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2019 8:53 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Mono on IBM i - Porting Mono to AIX and IBM i

I don't want to make this just about my shop, Richard.  I'm trying to create a generic roadmap to get Mono into traditional IBM i shops.  If you have Microsoft development skills, enthusiasm, and time to try new things, I don't think this is a hard sell.  I'm trying to see how to make it attractive to the large number of shops that are maintaining existing business applications and may have, at most, one champion for new technologies.  Plenty of people who read this list have trouble getting RDi into their shops, much less a new technology like Mono.  So how do we get those lone early adopters to use their limited time on Mono?

Again, I don't want to make this about me.  At my shop, I can do everything right up to step 7, it's just a judgment call on my part as to whether it's worth the effort. But there are lots of shops that have one developer who's struggling to get coworkers to use RPG /free; in fact, that's a large part of my audience.  How can we help them take the plunge into Mono, and does it even make sense for them?  If you think success is predicated on demographics and enthusiasm level, then maybe Mono isn't for everybody.