RE: framework question

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Bartell, Aaron L. (TC)
>
> I figured if IBM produced those classes with the iSeries in mind
> that they would make sure they facilitated all its needs.

Rivaling the performance of packed decimal data in RPG is not perceived
as a "need", however.  All that BigDecimal does is provide arbitrary
precision decimal arithmetic.  It is neither fast nor elegant.

> I guess I took you for a Java guy until just recently (past year or
so).
> What is your history with RPG?

Long.  I started on a System/3 in the late 70's, and worked with a small
entrepreneurial company that used the S/3, S/34, S/36 and S/38, not to
mention the Series/1 and our own hardcoded microprocessor boxes (for
example, we designed a box that turned one Bisync line on a S/3x into up
to 16 async channels, since IBM didn't support async connections at the
time).

With that company, I learned how to make the machines dance, basically.
We wrote client/server messaging protocols on the S/38 before they
really had a name.  We basically rolled our own EVERYTHING, including
operating systems and databases.  I lost my fear of computers in that
job.

My next position was corporate IT - I worked for International Harvester
(Navistar).  There I developed a national network of PCs connected to a
central S/38 for credit card processing.  This was before the days of
the Internet; remote PCs dialed in to a local PC, which used 5250
emulation to send and receive data from the S/38 (the first screen
scraper!).  I designed and implemented the bulk of the RPG code on the
S/38, as well as the PC code.

My next career was at System Software Associates, the world's largest
AS/400 software company (at least until it went bankrupt).  There I was
the Manager of Architecture, responsible for the overall design of
perhaps the largest application ever written for the IBM midrange.  This
included not only the base application itself, which was millions of
lines of RPG code (and eventually AS/SET code <shudder>), but also the
client/server design.  We wrote three million-line client/server
applications in C on OS/2 that provided graphical capabilities to SSA's
ERP package.  They went Unix/SQL and went bankrupt.

Since then, I've been writing code rejuvenators.  First was Focus/2000,
the world's most successful Y2K repair tool for RPG programs, and now
PSC/400, my direct 5250 to GUI conversion utility.  So I'm relatively
comfortable with the language <smile>.

That's me.

Joe