Re: VARPG (was Design Change Requests)

If I may make a comment, please.

It does take more than 20 minutes.  :)

Luke Dalton wrote:
...

Never mind that VARPG is indeed easy to use, and for an RPG programmer, it's
about a twenty minute learning curve.  If it's not mainstream then why take

a chance on it, seems to be the prevailing current. ...

I can only imagine that Claus Weiss must be banging his head on the wall
every day trying to figure out why iSeries shops cry for software to easily
create GUI-based screens on a daily basis, but fail to pick up his VARPG

tool and use it when it's free and right there for the asking. It defies explanation.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Marco Facchinetti
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 2:36 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: VARPG (was Design Change Requests)

VARPG is a language and beside Ibm not spending money in it to make it
better and competitive the only part to blame (?) are Iseries developers...
If only more people push using it we can have a decent tool, people there in
Toronto are really good, only they have a 0$ budget.
It's RPG, real rpg with a GUI interface, the learning curve for an RPG
programmer is quite short.
About the the "thick client" problem I can only say it's a non existing
problem. Install it on a file server (any flavour: windows, unix, ifs or
samba) and it works. VARPG isn't so dependent from windows, it has his own
runtime and there is no need of setup complicated environment.

Marco

--- Jim Franz <franz400@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't know why VARPG can't gain traction Marco...

1. Because IBM rarely even mentions the product...
2. Over the years it's only been casually mentioned in the trade press - a

few articles, a few books, and as usual, many of us tried it out in it's very early days had problems.

3. Because many software vendors went the other routes (c##,java,vb) so

they could write to more than 1 platform, and those languages were recognized by the world outside of iSeries. IT buyers are often looking for the most "popular" language, counting on a steady supply of (cheap) coders

4. the already mentioned "thick client" maintenance issues
(i also wish more had adopted it. the iSeries could be far better accepted

in the marketplace if perceived as graphical).
just my opinion
jim franz

----- Original Message ----- From: "Booth Martin" <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 12:02 PM
Subject: Re: VARPG (was Design Change Requests)

I don't know why VARPG can't gain traction Marco.  I find it frustrating
to see firms embrace Windows but avoid VARPG.  Where I've seen it tried,
people like it.



Marco Facchinetti wrote:

--- Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Oh.  Then it is a design issue.

VARPG uses a runtime environment.  If you try to use that model then,
yes, updates would be tiresome.

However the runtime is only about 15 megs.  Building it into the
application locks the two together, and updates are no longer an issue.
I stored the application (including runtime) on a server.  When a

user

opens the desktop version, the desktop version checks to see if its
still King.  If not, it replaces itself with the newer version.
Downloading 20 megs once in a while from a server is not much of a
burden imho.

Still, the fact remains, VARPG can't gain traction.

Why??

Marco

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