I am going to gently disagree with "EGL is closer to RPG and COBOL than
any of the other languages being presented as alternatives" statement.
I'll start with my assumptions, and I am biased here because my lack of
"extensive" history with RPG: I wrote my first RPG II program on S/36
in 1985 and had no clue what I was doing. Outside of a smattering of
Fortran programming in the mid-70's and some BASIC programming in early
1980 I hadn't written much in the way of computer programs before that.
Even now I haven't been a "full time" programmer until the last two
years. From 1985 until 2006, I was doing programming up to 100% of my
time but my primary focus was either management or consulting, not
programming. So I add that preamble so that you can see my bias when it
comes to using a programming tool: I am a pragmatist, not someone who
will focus on the technical elegance of the tool.
So the assumption is, the day to day RPG programmer is writing code with
SEU and is probably not using much in the way of ILE. No free format,
no modules, no ILE integration with Java or C. So that is my
assumption, given my experience, and that assumption may be flawed.
OK, with *that* assumption, an RPG programmer, as I have just
described, now has just launched RBD and is staring at the workbench.
This ain't like SEU, this ain't like anything they have seen on the i
before. They are in a graphical world now and as they walk through their
first "Hello World" app or whatever, they are almost guaranteed to
encounter an error. It won't resemble an SEU error or a compile error.
It will display like some errors do in a browser or in Windows. Just a
text message probably with a reference they haven't seen before.
This isn't unique to EGL. But I would argue, unlike what you posit,
that EGL has no advantage in this case. PHP 5, Java, C# would all be
equally baffling to an RPG programmer at this point. I think the reverse
is equally true as well, someone used to a more graphical development
environment would be baffled by what they would experience going to
RPG. In fact the two Midrange posts that might be the RPG analog to
Jon's comment about EGL and the difficulty he has in unpacking the
errors would be the post RE: "Ext Print Files - In the Beginning" from
July 10th and the post RE: "help !! output screen disapear soon ." from
June 28th. These are two posts about very simple things that each of the
authors found baffling. They seem new to RPG and can't figure out what
they have done wrong. It probably is *just* different enough from what
they are used to leave them confused.
Now, one of them may say "Geez, this RPG stuff is really confusing. I
wish it were more straight forward" and perhaps someone, maybe Simon
Coulter, would let them know in no uncertain terms that they ought to
stop disparaging RPG and RTFM (in his own inimitable way). But it was
merely a statement of frustration, a means to seek help, not slight to
the language.
EGL holds a lot of promise, and, fortunately, has moved out of the
"skunk works" and is becoming a topic that is widely discussed and
supported and, therefore, easier to get help/support info for. That is a
good thing. But I don't believe it is naturally an easier to digest
language. It's like Java, but different enough to cause me quite a bit
of frustration. It is like RPG, but different enough to give me
headaches as I do mental gymnastics to translate RPG into EGL
constructs. Like Jon, I DO like EGL and I look forward to using it with
greater regularity but we need to concentrate on making it easier for
the noobs to sort out their errors and keep moving. That is what the
list here is for.
"it's more productive, and the tools are better. But that's just me
<smile>." Yeah, it IS just you, at the moment. What we need are more
Joe Plutas, in terms of EGL knowledgeable professionals, on this list.
And, here is MY editorial, perhaps more EGL knowledgeable professionals
that don't see complaints about the difficulties in the language as
being attacks against EGL. Just frustrations that offer opportunities
for improvements.
Pete
Joe Pluta wrote:
Pete Helgren wrote:
But I stick by my guns on the "different is confusing" part. Making it
easy/easier to figure out what is wrong is the first step in in easing
adoption.
I agree with this, of course. Different is confusing. But I also
maintain that EGL is closer to RPG and COBOL than any of the other
languages being presented as alternatives, and it's more productive, and
the tools are better. But that's just me <smile>.
Joe
midrange.com
