Re: "Webulating" RPG

>>"I concede to your greater wisdom."<<

It would be nice to think that "wisdom" is what I have - sadly "battle scars"
is closer to the truth.  I've spent the better part of my life for the last ten
years trying to persuade people to update the way they do things.  Not on a
"grand" scale like switching to OO - that is after all a very big leap.  Rather
on a smaller incremental scale, like simply upgrading the AD environment, using
RPG IV, that kind of thing.

Just to give you an example.  Last fall I did a roadshow on the west coast.
The theme was "Things you must do, things you should do, and things you might
do" (which equated to Y2K, updating your AD environment, and Java).  During the
"updating your AD" part, I did a brief demonstration of VARPG - which included
showing the CODE/400 editor.  Just about every time someone in the audience
would ask if they could get such an editor to work with their existing RPG
programs.  When I pointed out that CODE/400 had been available for years (I
know .. I know .. it was OS/2 only until a year ago) the usual reaction was
amazement.  I then took to asking the audience how many of them had heard of
CODE/400.  During all the sessions we did (and on many other occasions) the
number has never been greater than about 25% - and this is among those who are
sufficiently interested in AD to even bother going to sessions like this!!

Our marketing is obviously not as good as it should be, but discussions with
others such as Aldon (who market Flex/Edit) lead me to believe that the AS/400
crowd as a whole are difficult to reach, and even harder to sell to.  It would
be interesting to survey those on this list (obviously among the leaders in
AS/400 technology!) to see just how many are still using SEU as their primary
editor (which as I've said in the past I regard as being the equivalent of
using a sharpened screwdriver to do fine woodcarving!!)


Jon Paris - AS/400 AD Market Support - paris@ca.ibm.com
Phone: (416) 448-4019   -   Fax: (416) 448-4414
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