Re: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

On 7/13/2011 5:22 AM, john e wrote:

why the heck do we have a bif for xml parsing when a service program is

The RPG community wants "native" UI, whatever that means (yes EXFMT).
It's another world now, since the 90's (see my reference to client/server).

I'd be happy if you'd stop saying what "the RPG community" wants, since I consider myself part of the community and you don't seem to have any idea what I want.

Most RPG developers, in my experience, are not developers.
They are office workers, doing what has to be done that day, from 9 to 5.
If anybody here is insulted by this observation, i'm sorry.

I'm insulted by the fact that you think 9-to-5 work is insulting. Some of the best programmers I ever met came from business backgrounds, not Computer Science. That's because they knew EXACTLY what the computer is - a tool to get business done.

It's a fact. Most people on this list *are* developers.
But that is not enough, it's 1%.

Actually, many of the people on this list are computer geeks, some geekier than others. The posts become philosophical discussions about parameter types and OO concepts and rambling language comparisons. None of these have much to do with development in the business world, which is the focus of all of these lists. Because like it or not, if computers didn't do something productive in the business world, most of us wouldn't have jobs.

A couple of points here. First, what can be done in any Turing complete language can be done in any other. And second, pretty much every programming task was accomplished in the 1960s and we're just reimplementing them.

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But closer to the truth than some of these discussions, I think.

Joe