RE: Bob's letter on V5R4 RPG stuff

-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Bartell [mailto:albartell@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 11:11 AM
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: Bob's letter on V5R4 RPG stuff


>>>What happens when XML goes away for the next flavor?  I'd rather have
>>generic tools than specific tools which can be built externally from RPG
>>using RPG and those generic tools.

>I am sure there will be a next technology to take XML's place someday, but
>the good thing is that XML is being deeply ingrained into the big players
>which *should* guarantee a certain amount of shelf life.

my take on this is that Java and .NET already have framework classes that 
probably millions of programmers are using for creating and consuming xml 
documents. Since RPG is intended as a language to run on hardware that has been 
geared down to 25% of its capacity, the language cant have the object oriented 
features of C# and Java. The end result is RPG programmers dont work with XML 
using the established class frameworks that the majority of programmers use 
today. It is great that the language has been improved. Programmers should be 
aware that their RPG skills dont transfer to other languages.

-Steve