RE: RPGIII to get a facelift? -- RPG400-L

I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see some of those functions your
requesting. But, you want an incentive to move that the users will see
benefit from? How about decreased development time? Moving production code
to RPGIV with subprocs, service pgms, etc will reduce the time of your
projects. You start spending less time on the functions that happen in every
program and start spending your time on the problem at hand. Your testing
time is reduced as your standard business rules are placed into one
location...known good, tested and proven code. Users want to see results.
When they make a request for a new inquiry screen or report and you turn
that around faster, that's the result.

As for time for conversion, I don't really see it. Maybe I'm lucky, but,
every program I've ever converted from RPGIII to RPGIV with CVTRPGSRC has
compiled and worked without any modifications or costly conversion time. Oh,
well there was the minute or so in making a PDM option. Yeah, then there was
the short amount of time for the command to churn out RPGIV. Sure, it's
still RPGIII in an RPGIV source member. But, it's a start for those who want
to take baby steps towards the future.

-Kevin

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Klement [mailto:rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 1:13 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: RPGIII to get a facelift?



> One of the things I constantly hear from programmers is that their boss
will
> not let them convert from III to IV because "it will cost money".  In
other
> words there is no perceived cost in staying where they are.

There's a big cost to upgrading to RPG IV. You have to pay for training,
you have to pay programmers for their time in making the conversion from
RPG III to RPG IV, and for the time they spend testing.

I think it's important to realize that it's the users and the customers
who drive IT budgets.  How much money is spent on programming almost
always depends on what the USER is going to get in return, NOT what the
programmer is going to get.

If the RPG IV screens are identical to the RPG III screens -- the users
haven't gained anything.

This is what I was trying to say in the last message -- there needs to be
an INCENTIVE.  There's got to be some advantage to the user or to the
customer in order for the change to make sense.

You can tout service prgorams, subprocedures, free-form, longer variable
names, etc until your blue in the face -- users will never see the
difference, and so companies won't want to spend money on it.

Make it easy for the programmers to give the users what they want...
modern GUI interfaces instead of 5250, spreadsheets or PDF documents
instead of green bar reports.  Make it rich, fast, and powerful without
making it inordinately complicated.

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