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<snip>
When the S/36 was folded into the S/38, all those S/36 users
came on board and started lobbying for the system not to be changed.
Resulting in the decision to lock down the features of ILE.
</snip>

Steve,

I actually think you have some good points and questions from time-to-time, but the snippet above ain't one of them. Not only is it bogus, but illogical.

It may be true that there are still some old /36 shops that are running entirely in the 36 environment, but not being a computer engineer I can't see why that would have any effect on the ILE environment. RPG II (as well as III and /400) is not a participant in ILE, but I write plenty of ILE RPG code while maintaining older II code here. So I hope you understand my problem with the assertion that this resulted in any decision to "lock down" ILE.

And S/36 users never lobbied for the AS/400 to not be changed. They did lobby (successfully) to be allowed to run their legacy code and OCL in as near a 36-like environment as possible without changes. That was/is a huge benefit to companies, like ours, that want to move forward but don't want/need the cost/pain of changing existing stuff that works. It, also, benefited IBM and its customers by making the AS/400 a more viable (and profitable) system. That is, I recall once that there were > 250k S/36 customers and only single(?) digit K S/38 customers. By including the 36 customer base in the AS/400 family, IBM made it a much more marketable system; one that could afford and merit the enhancements for which you and others lobby (not all, but some).

Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email: jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Richter
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 2:22 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: what was the single mgmt decision made in mid-1990s that slowed the evolution of ILE/RPG?

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Steve Richter
What decision would that have been and why was it made?

Well, Stuart Milligan, vice president of business development, Databorough implied that IBM decided not make RPG a fully OO language like Java and C#.

So what's the point? Databorough develops tools to convert RPG to Java. So his rant against RPG may be a thinly veiled attempt to get developers to use his tools.

Personally, I'm grateful that RPG is a procedurally oriented language, doesn't carry the overhead of a fully OO language, and hasn't evolved into bloatware like Java and MS .net runtime environments.


Nathan, I dont see why it has to be either/or. In windows you can
still code in C against the WIN32 API. Or use .NET and managed code.
If a decision was made to cutoff development of ILE, I wish people in
the know had spoken up and made the decision public.

What about the assertion that the AS400 was the death of the S/38
computer movement? Shops that were forward looking and interested in
writing cuting edge computer apps choose the S/38. Those that wanted
a 1960s architecture their company could afford selected the S/34 and
S/36. When the S/36 was folded into the S/38, all those S/36 users
came on board and started lobbying for the system not to be changed.
Resulting in the decision to lock down the features of ILE. Was ILE
designed by the S/36 or S/38 side of IBM?

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