Re: Future of RPG

Because if I dropped off an i5 at a university, and spent 3 hours telling 
them how good it was and drove away the next day it would be sold and the 
revenue spent on building a monument to the dean.  The local sponsor is to 
do the follow through.  Don't know if IBM could offer to host two 
instructors for 2 weeks of extensive IBM on site training - all expenses 
paid, and the university would accept that without the local sponsor. 

Rob Berendt
-- 
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
PO Box 2000
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





Don <dr2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
11/09/2004 11:38 AM
Please respond to
RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


To
RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc

Fax to

Subject
Re: Future of RPG








I don't get it...why is it that local business people should be being
asked to foot the bill for doing IBM's marketing???

Uh, does Sun, Microsoft, HP........etc.....etc.... also ask local people
to foot the bill or do they just drop the boxes in?  But then, they've got
alot more demand for thier systems...gee...go figure why...

No, they're not dead, but they definately are dying...it's going to be a
slow death, but there is no question that they are dying.

Don in DC

---------------------------------------

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Chris Wolcott wrote:

> At one time IBM had a program where they would give an AS/400 system to
> a school if local business(es) would agree to supply instructors.  I
> thought this was a great idea on their part.  Does anyone know if they
> still do this?
>
> As far as the rumors of RPG's death being exaggerated, every one says
> COBOL is dead too but I haven't seen the hearse drive away yet.  There
> was nothing I couldn't do in COBOL that others could do in any other
> language.  For the most part it is a factor of how well you know the
> language, not how many fancy opcodes are in it.  (Any more it is how
> smooth the salesman is.  One company I was at was thinking of replacing
> DB/2 with Oracle on the 400, because the salesman had nearly convinced
> the top brass that DB/2 was dead. . . )
>
> Like any other language, the ease with which one learns RPG depends on
> the tutoring/mentoring available.  I was from a non-IBM mainframe COBOL
> background when I got a job in an AS/400 RPG shop.  All they gave me was
> an account and a couple of cassette tapes on RPG to listen to.  We
> maintained custom code in a 'canned' RPG application the company had
> bought.  The code was a mess, a mixture of cyclic and procedural logic
> and not commented worth a darn.  I kept looking for the 'secret decoder
> ring' to figure out the use of the indicators.  To top it off the
> listings were done via some program that indented the code, but also
> displaced the indicators in the <=> columns.  That made figuring out
> what they were doing quite difficult unless all three columns were used.
> Even with that, I was writing code by the middle of the next week.
>

--
This is the RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries (RPG400-L) mailing list
To post a message email: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.