RE: I'd rather do it myself -- MIDRANGE-L

Title: Re: I'd rather do it myself

The problem I see is the fact that AS400 programs want an arm and a leg for there general purpose procedures. Recently a lot of byte went around this list about how to center text in a field. Well, has someone written it with some other helpful string routines such as right justify the field? Can I purchase this for say 10 - 20 dollars? It is not worth the hundreds I have seen for other wrapper type procedures. Just look at the FTP batch clients available. Way to much money when for a tenth of the cost I can purchase a PC based one. IMHO this greed is what is keeping such libraries of functions off the market for the AS400.

Christopher K. Bipes     mailto:ChrisB@Cross-Check.com
Sr. Programmer/Analyst   mailto:Chris_Bipes@Yahoo.com
CrossCheck, Inc.         http://www.cross-check.com
6119 State Farm Drive    Phone: 707 586-0551 x 1102
Rohnert Park CA 94928 Fax: 707 586-1884

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-----Original Message-----
From: Leisk, Andrew [mailto:aleisk@frpaper.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2000 11:45 AM
To: 'midrange-l@midrange.com'; 'Stone, Brad V (TC)'
Subject: Re: I'd rather do it myself

Brad said:

Well, they are there. Now I just need help telling people where they are.
Not only should programmers help write these types of things, but when they
are there, they should also point people to the right direction. The AS/400
community seems to have a "I'd rather do it myself" type of attitude than
point someone to a place where things already exist.

Makes me think that maybe someday instead of each of us getting the compiler from IBM and then writing our own code in RPG, we will do like the 'C' community has been doing for years and years selling include files that can extend the language. Why must we get %bifs from IBM? Why can't someone write some really good general purpose business functions (call them Procedures) and sell the procedures as "language extensions". So if I wanted some new functionality I could "call" an function in a service program that Brad (for example) had written and sold to me.

Make the language grow to be more than just what IBM sells with the compiler. When one buys a 'C' compiler one can also get extensions to it. Or maybe this is like adding "beans" to Java. The same thing could be done now with RPG/IV if it were marketed right and IF we could update the mind sets of most of us to not think like "I'd rather do it myself".