Re: XML and AS/400

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I tend to agree.  Soon after Java came out (maybe a year or two)
I was looking for compilers to buy.  I saw Delphi (Pascal) for $79,
VC++ for $190 or so, and J++ for $29.  I only had a little over a
hundred with me, so I bought the Delphi (which we at that point
used at work) and J++ 1.0, figuring $29 was enough to waste if it wasn't
any good.

I took both home and installed them, and was writing programs in
Delphi rather quickly (inside 1/2 an hour, as I already knew the language
and compiler).

Then I turned to J++ (Microsoft's first version of Java I believe) and
tried to work with it.  I had a real application I wanted to write, a family
tree program I could stick on my home page and let people "browse"
my family tree and add any entries they knew about (which I would
research and make sure they were correct before applying).  After a
week or so of trying to get the very first piece done, showing a picture
of a tree I had found, I gave up.  It would work in IE, but not in
Netscape.  And even in IE it didn't do it the way I wanted it to, even
though I was following the examples, and searching news groups, etc..

1.0 of just about anything is horrible, I understand.  But unless you
want to pay to be a beta tester (I usually beta test for free) stay away
from very new technology unless you have a very pressing reason to
use it immediately.  It will always take so much more resources to do
something in a "new" language than in a tried and true language,
just because it's been extensively debugged through use, for one
thing, and a lot of the tools have already been written.

In fact, I think I still have the Microsoft J++ 1.0 set at home.  What
to do with it?  Think it'll be a collectors item some day?  lol

Regards,

Jim Langston

"L. S. Russell" wrote:

> Nobody is saying ignore XML, just let it mature. Bandwagon jumpers
> should learn to use a little restraint.
> "Anybody who has every tried to implement EDI knows that the X12
> standard", he says with a chuckle "is anything but standard." And yet,
> thanks to all the bandwagon jumpers, and corporate profit centers we are
> forced to re-map ASN's for each and every freakin new customer.
> And so far XML is only slightly less disjointed a standard "again
> laughing".

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