Re: What would you do without RPG?

Scott,

It's really great to read your response. I had kind of forgotten
about the perspective of someone who can choose more-or-less whatever
tools they want and whatever platform they want. You say things like
"well, might as well use something more mainstream at that point", as
if it's not a particularly big deal.

I'm sure part of that is your professional situation (which many of us
do not share), but even beyond that, you probably are approaching
Nathan's question in a more fruitful way, in terms of thought
experiment and discussion.

I certainly wouldn't run
something like Java (which I really hate).

Interesting. I watched your POI presentation at the last COMMON
virtual conference, and you came across (to me) as actually kind of
liking Java. I will chalk that up to your professionalism, your
overall positive manner and outlook, and your unmistakable broad
enthusiasm for programming in general.

So if I had to switch, it might as well be C++, which can
at least take full advantage of the native features of the OS, such as job
logs, message queues, exception handling, etc.

I hope you'll forgive my ignorance and help me understand something.
Does C++ allow you to take full advantage of the native features due
to it being an ILE language? Or do you just mean it allows you to
easily call IBM system APIs? Or is it something else about the
language, or about IBM's implementation of the language, apart from
ILE features?

For example, which of the following would you say takes better
advantage of native features: (1) non-ILE RPG, or (2) ILE C++? I
could easily see the answer being (1), because even RPG III had
unbeatable integration with the underlying DB2 database. But maybe
there are things about ILE that are even more pervasive or compelling.

John Y.