Re: When an AS/400 is called an iSeries

From Lucas B.:
I, personally, am really allergic to this way of reasoning, because it
boils down to "we're vendor locked to RPG code, and this is why we're
using a System i". Vendor lock-in is never a good thing, but there are
some advantages when doing so.

What does vendor lock-in have to do with RPG code? I don't see the
correlation. Would the customer be less locked in if the code were Java,
Visual Basic, C#, COBOL, or whatever.

But nonetheless, nobody WANTS vendor lock-in.

Vendors love it. And a lot customers prefer dealing with just one vendor. But
I heartily agree that vendor lock-in is bad; it creates an un-level playing
field, and stifles competition. I just don't see the correlation between
vendor lock-in and RPG.

In my opinion, this is NOT a good way to sell the System i to new
businesses - you can use this internally to tell management that they
should buy a new System i and then don't have to switch from their
legacy 5250 BASIC/RPG to a more modern solution, or can phase the
migration from this application to the new generation using HATS, or
even a new version of the software that e.g. uses Java. Parallel
deployment of the new software solution while still using the same
database, etc.

It's pretty clear that 5250 use has really dropped off. But I also think that
the life of interim-transition technologies like HATS and Webfacing is even
more limited. To be very brief, they add overhead without much real value.

Does a new customer know what RPG is? No. Maybe they've heard of
it as a legacy language used by some older IBM mainframes, but the
average non-System i zealot believes RPG to be dead and only used
in legacy systems. Yes, you can write modern CGI web application with
AJAX and all the funny stuff in RPG - but do you really want to? The
answer is only yes if the only thing you can do well is write RPG code
(every problem looks like a nail if the only tool you have is a hammer).

Why pick on RPG? And yes, you should consider RPG for back-end servers
supporting AJAX clients - even if you're not currently using RPG. I have RPG
templates for Web applications that are VERY impressive and the performance is
simply unmatched.

With regards,

Nathan M. Andelin