RE: Is RPG dying

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Lampert
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 9:29 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: Is RPG dying

Monnier, Gary wrote:

Are you sure it isn't just a rumor being spread by those that are
invested heavily in other languages?

In the first place, no one programming language is a panacea, and none should be treated as such.

Yet far too many programmers only bother to learn one, and let's face it, when the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem ends up looking like a nail.

And that hammer these days seems to be composed of 2 parts: One for the user interface and another to use SQL to access the database SQL being somewhat an interpretive language (Prepare/describe/execute at run time if desired.).

The human interface always goes back to the adage "Make it look like what they learned in school"

I can't even begin to count the number of times over the years I've been asked "Why can't my interface be Excel?"

If RPG is dying, then /free (which makes RPG look like something entirely different, and consumed resources that *could* have been used to make a full
implementation of PL/I available on the 400), and the fact that The Cycle is so rarely used these days, and that so much new software uses SQL instead of native RLA, >>and that native RLA hasn't been updated to support certain data types, are all nails in its coffin.

Can't argue with that. I've had the feeling, sometimes, IBM is trying to make ILE RPG more of a system-oriented language than a database access language. An "easier" C maybe.

--
GM