Re: Windows vs i5/OS as a platform

From: albartell

We will just have to agree to disagree. Adding Java to an RPG programmers
environment simply isn't as easy as you make it out to be (in my
experience).

Gotcha. So you're basically saying that if another language requires any
learning, then you don't want it in your environment. Not sure how you're
going to incorporate things like Ajax, and of course PHP is right out of the
question. But okay, that's your world.

Like I said (paraphrasing here), if the thin JSP layer simply
received the RPG data from the controller and built the screen based on it
then this architecture is much simpler. Of course that would warrant the
passing of meta data with the data, but done right could produce a pretty
cool framework (one that I am working on in the desktop environment) that
is easier to build initially and maintain after the fact.

That's exactly what EGL does: you define the data and the metadata
separately from the business logic, and then you paint the screen by
dropping the data onto a page using a WYSIWYG designer.

Frameworks that magically build the UI based on assumptions about the data
are cool as well. But again, that's what I do for a living, so I know full
well the down side to that particular approach, which you usually hit
roughly the first time you show a generated screen to the end user and they
say, "But I want that field HERE."

Joe