RE: RPG IV

Step 1.  CVTRPGSRC
Step 2.  Compile
Step 3.  Relax

Bradley V. Stone
Taylor Corporation - OASIS Programmer/Analyst   
bvstone@taylorcorp.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: eric [SMTP:eric@norcov.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 1998 1:20 PM
> To:   'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
> Subject:      RPG IV 
> 
> Jon,
>       You say that the conversion process for gong from RPG III to RPG IV
> (not 
> full-blow ILE) is about 5 days.  What educational resources did you use to
> 
> accomplish this?  Please advise.  Thank you.
> 
> Eric Kempter
> CommAir Mechanical Services, Inc.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon.Paris@halinfo.it [SMTP:Jon.Paris@halinfo.it]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 1998 8:41 AM
> To:   Don
> Cc:   midrange-l@midrange.com
> Subject:      Re: *** ADMIN: Ok, one more time, a POLL on www.midrange.com
> 
> OK Don - I'll bite.
> 
>  >Reasons not using RPG IV include:
> 
>  >No business reason to do the conversion.
> 
> I'm constantly hearing about the RPG programmer shortage.  I would have
> thought that a language that has a minimal to non-existent learning curve
> but brings significant productivity increases is reason enough.  I would
> say it's hard to find a business reason _not_ to do the conversion.  Also
> in this category, you're locking yourself out of almost everything new on
> the system - IBM are not going to go on building CALL type APIs.
> 
> Many people on this list complain about IBM lack of marketing etc. (and I
> agree with that) but sometimes I wonder if this "it ain't broke so don't
> touch it" attitude also contributes to the view of the box as "old
> fashioned" (my turn to run and duck now <grin>)
> 
>  >Why all the extra DASD to do the same thing I'm doing now?
> 
> By taking the option to compress observability I can finish up with lower
> DASD usage.  Even without that you have to have a lot of programs to use
> up
> a significant amount of space.  Again the trade off is productivity
> against
> hardware.  DASD is a hell of a lot cheaper than the hourly cost of your
> brain.
> 
>  >Why all the extra hardware to do the same thing I'm doing now?  (Based
> on
>  >extra memory/cpu needed to push these new puppies)
> 
> This varies and I've yet to meet anyone who thought that the increase was
> not worth the effort.  Admittedly this depends on your hardware - it's
> more
> likely to present a problem on CISC than RISC.  However, if this was the
> only criteria, everyone would still be using DOS or Win 3.1
> 
>  >Why the extra learning curve to do what I have now and what works now?
> 
> What learning curve ?  Absolute outside it is 4 to 5 days to use the
> compiler in compatibility mode.  Note that I'm not advocating that
> everyone
> switch to full ILE etc. - but every journey starts with a single step.
> 
>  >And, you'll see that alot of this also applies to your JAVA question...
> 
> Here I really have to strongly disagree with you.  We're talking about a
> situation where there is no conversion available (and you probably
> wouldn't
> want it anyway since we're talking about OO versus procedural) compared
> with a simple command that does it for you.  We're talking about the
> difference in learning curve of 5 days (I'm being generous) versus 3 to 6
> months.  I fully understand that a switch to Java does indeed need a real
> good reason. Also other RPG programmers will undoubtedly be able to read
> your RPG IV even if they haven't been "converted".  They wouldn't be able
> to read your Java.  Sorry but this is a "chalk and cheese" comparison.
> 
> 
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