Re: The Truth About EGL -- WEB400

Trevor,

The facts are the facts. We have a significant population of RPG developers
and customers have a huge inventory of RPG applications. RPG has a healthy
future for at least 10 years. I cannot see beyond that point. It is also a
fact that we are seeing a major decline in RPG programmers with the bulk of
the population nearing retirement age and very few new young people entering
the population. This is not my view point, look at Gartner and other
analysts. Can we turn this around? Should we turn this around? I can
assure you that IBM and I myself are committed to insuring that we protect
our customer's investment in RPG and that is a fact. We are taking some
specific steps to insure that we can provide that investment protection on
an ongoing basis. I will talk much more about this after our January
announcement when I am free to talk about our repackaging of System i tools
and compilers.

Trevor I do not know the future of RPG. I see what I see in the market
which is a decline in the number of programmers and an increase in the
number of customers asking us to help them migrate to other technologies.
You can absolutely be assured that as long as customers continue to use RPG
and want to use it, that we will support and enhance it.

As far as EGL goes, I think folks should begin to use it along with RPG, not
in place of. I've looked carefully at the requests for an RPG based Web UI
and feel that EGL meets the requirements that customers have set forth in
this area. There certainly was elegance and simplicity in one language that
could do it all and that is also a fact. Unfortunately I do not see that
day coming back anytime soon. I think it is now a time where you must pick
multiple tools to get the job done. EGL is one choice, it is the IBM
recommended strategic choice. There are most definitely alternative
solutions available today from other vendors and/or the open source
community.

Choices are based on our customers budgets, staffing constraints, and
demands of the business as well as the customer's tolerance of risk. IBM's
position is clear, we offer two very distinct paths to modern Web
development: Java and EGL. The System i is computer platform that supports
many other alternatives and those choices are also available to our
customers. We hope customers choose the IBM path...

On Dec 18, 2007 6:41 AM, Trevor Perry <trevor@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Bob,

This paragraph is the reason why people consider that you are saying RPG
is
dead. While you may not use the words, your intent is clear.

Out here in the real world, customers are not universally asking for
migration from RPG. There are many customers who wish to leverage their
investment in RPG and their staff, and would love to see you extend RPG
beyond a green screen language.

And, btw, thanks for your offlist reply to my question from this weekend.
I
appreciate your consideration, and I appreciate you speaking for IBM.

Trevor

On 12/18/07 9:24 AM, "Bob Cancilla" <bob.cancilla@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Look RPG is an outstanding language and better than it has ever been at

the

V5R4 level of the language and will be even better at V6R1 and beyond,

but

facts are facts. It is an old language and no amount of wishing or
marketing will turn it into a popular modern language. RPG as I said

before

has at least a strong 10 year life, maybe much longer. It is however on

the

decline. Just look around your shop. How many young people (20's or

even

30's) do you have in the shop? Who is teaching RPG? or COBOL for that
matter.

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