RE: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

Joe,

Regarding your two statements below... the fact that OO enforces you to make bigger changes in that context usually results in maintaining cleaner code in the long end (however there's not that many OO code still alive from 20 years ago)... and renaming a class in Java isn't a big task neither due to all the automated refactoring tools in Eclipse (that you can't do it easily as an external product owner is another discussion).

About your second statement... that "flexibility" is the main reason why our system is called out-dated, because we (or at least many do so) still run the same code as 20 years ago. If you look at Microsoft, they force their customers every few years a major rewrite so the product remains sexy (if customers realize the cost of this is again another discussion).

So as far as I'm concerned, please give me OO capabilities in RPG (just like any other language has in the mean while, from VB to PHP), even if it is only the naming scope and encapsulation to begin with.

Related to your article... I'm afraight that we only fool ourselves, and omitting C# and Microsoft in it is not really realistic as they're killing us much faster (mainly based on marketing than acutal strengths) than Java or PHP alike tools.

Kind regards,
Paul

________________________________________
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of Joe Pluta [joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 13:49
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

In an OO environment, if it turns out
that your class hierarchy is no longer valid, changing the fundamental
class hierarchy is a major undertaking (heck, renaming a class is almost
impossible - that's why we still have the AS400 class in JTOpen!).


Whereas in a procedural language, it's often as simple as grafting
together a few bits from different programs, adding some new
functionality, and calling the new program.