RE: V5R3

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 12:47 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: V5R3


 >> Will V5R3 finally contain an improved ILE?

>Dream on Steve - there are some improvements in RPG IV, but I doubt you'll
>see anything in the pure ILE arena.

>I agree that some new features would be nice - but the survival of the
>platform is dependent upon a lot more things than just ILE.

This should be discussed more. The more I learn how .NET works the more I
see that language integration at the class/data structure/procedure level is
crucial for a platform.  COM used to be the way of integrating class code in
Windows.  It allowed a C++ class to be used in VB or an Excel spreadsheet
macro. ( and a VB class in C++ ) As clumsy as it was and as complicated as
the books on the subject made it appear to be, it was still widely used
because of the functionality it provided.  The CLI ( common language
infrastructure ) part of .NET replaces COM. And it does it pretty well, not
great, but better than COM. This is not rocket science, IBM has to either
get on board with CLI ( search the web for ECMA CLI ) or improve ILE.

-Steve