Re: What's the latest thinking of the best twoor threewebdevelopment languages/environ...

Scott,

You make some of my points I've been trying to make along if you insert the IBM i and RPG in place of Net.Data as you put it, "in the larger industry". However, that's something I'd like to change if the developers in the i space would move more to the mainstream space. I know, I'm starting again... tilting windmills... but for the IBM i's own good and advancement "in the larger industry".

Take care,

Dave

Scott Klement <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 8/8/2008 09:54 >>>

Hi Vern,

It's a mature product - it works, it has no problems hardly at all.
It got the ability to handle Java calls when it needed to. It gets
PTFs. What's the problem here?

The problem is market traction. Net.Data has never had much traction
in the market. Originally, it was cross-platform, but nobody used it
except on i -- so it was phased out. Even on i the number of
developers interested in it are a tiny percentage of the industry.

So that's the problem -- traction -- Net.Data has very little traction.
Very little adoption. You can't say that about RPG or Cobol. Cobol
has refused to die because there's so much software written in it. RPG
is still where 70% of i developement is done.. so while RPG is small
potatoes in the larger industry, it's "the king" in the System i space.

Net.Data is neither.

So why would someone want to use Net.Data? What advantage does it have
over anything else out there? (Is "better integration with REXX" really
a valid reason?)