Re: EJB versus RPG/COBOL -- JAVA400-L

Joe,

I didn't say anything against the skills of rpg programmers, I have long years 
of experience in programming rpg and the last 5 years I've had a look to the 
world of java, inside and outside of the as400 community. And my opinion is, 
that rpg and java programmers are thinking diffrent and you and me are 
examples for this fact.

Dieter

On Mittwoch, 10. März 2004 17:41, Joe Pluta wrote:
> > From: Dieter Bender
> >
> > Mixing RPG and Java is worst for maintainability, you will need both
> > skills forever and your Java design is driven by rpg prerequisites.
>
> This is actually not true, especially in shops with RPG/COBOL skills.
> In most cases your RPG/COBOL programmers will know your business rules
> already.  By keeping your business rules in a native iSeries language,
> you leverage your legacy programmers and at the same time you don't have
> to train Java programmers to learn your business.
>
> In my 25 years of development, it has become very clear to me that there
> are two different types of developers: business developers and GUI
> developers. People who develop GUIs (be it in VB or Java or C#) are
> younger, usually college trained, and almost always somewhat lean on
> business application knowledge.  They can code the heck out of a
> servlet, but they don't have a clue what an aged accounts receivable is,
> and generally its harder to teach business rules to a programmer with no
> business background than it is to teach a new programming language to a
> business application developer.
>
> Your business programmers know your system.  They are most comfortable
> in RPG or COBOL and can listen to a user's business requirement and
> translate that to code almost immediately.  These people should be the
> ones maintaining your business rules.
>
> By combining Java and RPG/COBOL programmers, each assigned to their own
> area, you can have the best of both worlds.  There is little training
> required on either side; both should be immediately productive.  The
> overhead is in proper design of the interfaces between the servlets and
> the business rules, but there are many ways to skin that cat, from
> direct calls to RPG/COBOL programs to data queues to stored procedures.
>
> So why so some people push to an all-Java solution?  I don't know.  To
> me, it doesn't make sense.  Use the right tool for the right job.  If
> the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything looks like a
> nail...
>
> Joe
>
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-- 
mfG

Dieter Bender


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