Re: A Christmas present for you from RPGNext

I'm on a team that maintains several legacy iSeries applications, and
I have an active commercial RPG CGI website that I maintain.
Otherwise, I am a windows developer. Some of my development targets
iSeries databases, although that is shifting more and more to SQL
Server. These days I really consider myself a C# developer. I write
articles, give presentations, teach classes, and run a .NET website
(http://www.developingfor.net).

C# and Visual Studio have really changed my development experience: I
actually look forward to coming to work and coding. Basically, it's
fun again, and even more so with all the new technologies MS has
recently released: Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5, WPF, Silverlight,
LINQ, and the list goes on. It is simply amazing what is becoming
possible.

I still think RPG is a great language, and I will always hold a soft
spot for RPG and the iSeries: that being said, it just doesn't fit
with my needs anymore. While I'm sure lots of people would love to
argue that you can encapsulate all the great RPG code in WebServices
or the like, so that you can consume them in .NET (or Java, or PHP, or
what have you) it's still ultimately a kludge. The truth is that
while ADO.NET is supposed to allow platform independence, it still
work best with SQL Server, now more than ever.

Our customers want real Microsoft Windows applications, not browser
apps. They all run Microsoft Desktops on Microsoft Networks
connecting Microsoft Servers. Every year we lose more market share to
Windows and SQL Server products. So it only makes sense for us to
embrace Microsoft technologies. And the new abilities available for
developing .NET apps against SQL Server are very compelling.

I long ago announced that I have become technology agnostic: this is
no longer the religious issue it once was for me. I have freed myself
from such things: now I just enjoy coding, and the results are
fantastic.

Happy Coding,