framework question - OO is useless -- JAVA400-L

Joe Pluta wrote:

<>[OO in business processes]
> This will never work in the real world where you have hundreds,
> thousands or even millions of individual items. Are you going to create
> a separate class for each one? Or are you going to somehow specify in
> the item master file which class the item belongs to? It's clear to me
> you've never really done this, except as a thought exercise.

Its clear to me that you dont understand the concept of OO, but this
doesnt surprise me, i only know few people coming from the iSeries/RPG
world that reached an acceptable understanding of OO. Most of them
think they know what OO is, but still code and think procedural.

> IBM wants you to move to Java so it can sell you more hardware, pure and
> simple.

And they code all their tooling products with java because they want you to buy bigger PCs from Dell and HP? IBMs invest in java is a strategical one, the iSeries community doesnt play a too big role in that.


> Namespaces can be done in procedural code just as easily. IBM allows
> long, mixed-case names for procedures, so it's quite easy to do your own
> namespace. I don't look to the language to enforce my naming
> conventions.

This is the most useless proposal to namespaces i have ever heard. This has nothing to do with namespaces, its more a coding convention in functional programming.

Marc, I get the idea you've never actually coded in a production environment. What you call "quick hacking" I call responding to external business decisions.


Joe, if i were you, i wouldnt throw out comments like this all over the 
time.
I wont argument my skills to you, I dont have to stand for that.

I can code that in a few lines of RPG and insert it into the appropriate place in the job stream.

Oh yeah, i saw many projects in RPG where you can quickly create something because the 3rd party library base is so huge. Ok, lets name of few where i am faster in java not necessarily because of Java, but because of the community behind it.

- XML processing in each and every spot
- encryption and authentication stuff
- Every kind of protocol programming like SMTP, HTTP, POP3, FTP,...
[this list could have about 100 entries]

With OO, I have to first figure out which class calculating the price, then be sure it has access to the history information. If not, I


cant follow you. It seems you really dont know what OO means.

probably have to change the method to make that information available.

Changing the method to make it available? Do you mean the visibility modifiers? You are correct, we should all turn back to procedural programming, because there we dont have this silly concept of visibility and the idea of hiding implementation details to other programmers.

That probably involves adding a new method procedure.  Then I probably
have to JAR up the new class and insert it into the web server, which
usually involves bringing the application down and restarting it.

Sorry, again, it seems that you were never involved in a java project. JARing something is nothing more than defining a good ANT script, when you compile your project its just another task you wont notice. You dont have to power down your appserver because one class changed, this is also a quite crazy statement.

Sorry, Marc, but the real world doesn't have the time for OO.


Sorry Joe, it seems you have lost contact to the real world.

Dont understand me wrong, i dont have problem with ILE RPG projects, but your claims regarding java and OO in general are problematic at best. Humans like thinking in objects, because its easier to work with them. Perhaps you can do a few things faster with RPG, but thats not the point. With every 4GL language, i beat RPG in terms of coding performance. I programmed 2 years Magic on the iSeries, there you can create a typical business application in about 1/4 time, but does that mean its the way to go? No, because you buy this speed with loss of flexibility.

Creating a project with a RPG/JSP mix is the last option i would use when creating a web-based project. I like calling RPG, but i call them as business entities, because most of the time it would be too much work to rewrite them in java. RPG is not part of my framework.

Back to your statement with the real world and OO. Why the hell are the worlds leading language architects designing OO based languages the last 10 years? They all missed correct? In fact, i am quite happy that we have some other languages and concepts than RPG, not because its bad, but because language inovation didnt come from Rochester the last 10 years. RPG is living because of its install base, not because of its inovation.

And Joe, beside working on your OO skills, you should focus on facts not on personal attacks. Flaming someone not having industry experience is somehow lame. Its just a poor try to back your arguments with strong words.

Marc Logemann
http://www.logemann.org